Up until William Blake, William Wordsworth, and David Hume put pen to paper the most revolutionary lines of thought regarding science and philosophy came from Isaac Newton and John Locke and involved humans being passive receivers in a world of set laws ruling passive atoms. Blake and Wordsworth both agree with David Hume that John Locke’s view of the world is too logical and Newtonian. Blake and Wordsworth can agree that the world is not made up of dead, passive Newtonian atoms, but is instead full of vibrant energies. However that is where their similarities end as they both see these vibrant energies as coming from different places and as shaping humans differently. Blake’s idea is that the world comes alive as the mind encounters it and
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Blake sees God within each human mind and believes in the idea that we bring our internal energy into the world and nature instead of the other way around. On Plate #11 of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake writes, “The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adoring them with the properties of the woods, rivers, mountains, lakes..” The ancient humans brought life to the world, or “animated” it with the creative spirit held within their minds. In his analysis of Blake’s work, William Blake: A Reading of the Shorter Poems, Hazard Adams describes this idea as, “The outer world is the activity of the mind projected in …show more content…
Wordsworth’s childhood in the Lake District was shaped by parental forces in nature, the female, “gentle visitations”, and the male, “severer interventions” that he writes guided him through “spots in time” of his childhood into adulthood. These “spots in time” are moments for Wordsworth’s life that have stuck with him and although he knows not why, have influenced him and act as poetic inspiration. One such spot that exemplifies this notion of rearing by nature’s energies is when Wordsworth stole a boat as a youth, “.. I dipped my oars into the silent lake, and as I rose upon the stroke my boat went heaving through the water like a swan - When from behind that rocky steep, till then the bound of the horizon, a huge cliff, as if with voluntary power instinct, upreared is heard… with measured motion like a living thing strode after me. With trembling hands I turned, and through the silent water stole my way back to the cavern of the willow-tree.” This, “spot in time” exemplifies the, “severer interventions” nature gave to him to teach him important lessons, such as to not steal. Unlike Blake who sees humans or ancient poets as animating the world around them, Wordsworth views the world as already animated such as the
Blake sees God within each human mind and believes in the idea that we bring our internal energy into the world and nature instead of the other way around. On Plate #11 of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake writes, “The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adoring them with the properties of the woods, rivers, mountains, lakes..” The ancient humans brought life to the world, or “animated” it with the creative spirit held within their minds. In his analysis of Blake’s work, William Blake: A Reading of the Shorter Poems, Hazard Adams describes this idea as, “The outer world is the activity of the mind projected in …show more content…
Wordsworth’s childhood in the Lake District was shaped by parental forces in nature, the female, “gentle visitations”, and the male, “severer interventions” that he writes guided him through “spots in time” of his childhood into adulthood. These “spots in time” are moments for Wordsworth’s life that have stuck with him and although he knows not why, have influenced him and act as poetic inspiration. One such spot that exemplifies this notion of rearing by nature’s energies is when Wordsworth stole a boat as a youth, “.. I dipped my oars into the silent lake, and as I rose upon the stroke my boat went heaving through the water like a swan - When from behind that rocky steep, till then the bound of the horizon, a huge cliff, as if with voluntary power instinct, upreared is heard… with measured motion like a living thing strode after me. With trembling hands I turned, and through the silent water stole my way back to the cavern of the willow-tree.” This, “spot in time” exemplifies the, “severer interventions” nature gave to him to teach him important lessons, such as to not steal. Unlike Blake who sees humans or ancient poets as animating the world around them, Wordsworth views the world as already animated such as the