Column: Wordsworth's wisdom can aid us in our defence of the natural world

We know it is urgent that we protect our rivers, woodland and wildlife.

A reliable source of inspiration on this subject is the poetry of William Wordsworth (1770-1850), which reminds us of how much nature can – and should – mean to us.

Memorably, he does so in ‘The Tables Turned’, a poem that was written in response to a friend’s suggestion that his time would be better spent in reading books of ideas, rather than in communing with his natural environment.

On the contrary, says the poet: ‘One impulse from a vernal wood/May teach you more of man,/Of moral evil and of good,/Than all the sages can.’

It’s not that difficult, Wordsworth tells us.

As long as we can hear a bird singing, we can affirm our relationship with the earth: ‘And hark! how blithe the throstle [song thrush]sings!/He, too, is no mean preacher:/Come forth into the light of things,/Let Nature be your teacher.’

That line, ‘Come forth into the light of things’ tells us that nature is in every aspect illuminating. Trees, streams, mountains, flowers: they are all charged with ‘light’, and we are invited to align ourselves with it.

The use of the word ‘things’ might strike us as odd, but Wordsworth is simply being ‘down to earth’, so to speak – he is simply celebrating the natural world in all its manifestations.

‘The Tables Turned’, then, gives us a moment of insight into nature as our true home. In a longer, more reflective poem, ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’, Wordsworth spells this idea out.

He speaks of a source ‘Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,/And the round ocean and the living air,/And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:/A motion and a spirit, that impels/All thinking things, all objects of all thought,/ And rolls through all things.’

Essentially, here is an anticipation of what we now call ‘ecology’, which is the study of the earth as our ‘home’ (Greek, oikos), for which we are responsible. Our duty is to regain our connection with outer nature, and to understand that our inner nature is inseparable from it.

William Wordsworth can certainly help us in this process.

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