Nature and the poets

Nature and the Poets...

Nature and its beauty have always been a profound source of inspiration for the aspiring writers and especially the poets since times immemorial. Different poets have described the beauty of Nature in their own imaginative way. And some of them have even gone to the extent of comparing Nature with God.

William Wordsworth, the best known poet of Nature, has shifted the centre of poetry to the rural places, where the fields are never brown and springs never go dry; where every breeze is dusty with the pollens of romance, where every twig is blessed with a sweet music that fills our hearts with gushes of emotions and creates strange thrills in our minds.
As a typical poet of Nature, he could find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in the stones and good in everything. Of all the poets, who have written of Nature, there is none that can be compared with him in the truthfulness of representation.

Wordsworth gives us the  bird and the flower, the wind and the tree, just as they are, and is content to let them speak their own message. He had not only sight, but insight also, that is he not only sees clearly and describes accurately but penetrates to the heart of things and always finds some exquisite meaning that is not visible on the very surface.
He initiates his readers into the secret of the soul's communion with Nature. According to him, human beings who grow up in the lap of nature are perfect in every aspect. In his eyes, " Nature is a teacher whose wisdom we can learn if we wish, and without which any human life is vain and incomplete," He believed in the education of Man by Nature.

Like Wordsworth, Robert Frost is also a great lover and admirer of Nature. His love is local and regional, his regions being- hills and dales, trees, flowers and plants, animals, insects, seasons and the changes in seasons, which he has described in his poems. He is a keen observer of every nook and corner of nature. Frost can be differentiated from Wordsworth in his manner of description of Nature which is more comprehensive, multi-faceted and all-inclusive.
Wordsworth and Frost have painted the two opposite sides of Nature.

Wordsworth loved to paint only the spring-time beauty of Nature, but Frost keeps an equally interested eye for the sensuous and the beautiful in nature, as well as for the harsher and the unpleasant. One must not commit a mistake in assuming that Frost is a mere painter of pleasant and beautiful landscapes. His Nature painting is dominated and characterised by the bleak, the barren and the sinister. Like other poets of Nature, he too loves and enjoys the beauty of Nature, but there are always hints of some impending dangers around, which keeps his readers awake and alert, which is the greatest quality of Frost as a poet of Nature. His poems remind the human beings of their duties and responsibilties, he wants to convey to them that they should enjoy the beauty of Nature but not at the cost of their moral duries. As he says in one of his best known poems, " Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".

" The Woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
This poem is even considered as one of the best known poems of the twentieth century.

Hence, beauty of Nature is eternal, infinite and beyond description. It unfolds its inner forms in various degrees. Different poets have found different meanings in its different moods and seasons. It has always inspired and guided them and will always inspire, guide, console and amuse the generations to come.