In I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, Wordsworth describes a persona traipsing and discovering daffodils by a lake only to reminisce over and derive great pleasure and comfort from the experience when loneliness, boredom, and restlessness later strike. Conversely, Arnold’s Dover Beach dissects the reality of a new world detached from faith, arguing that the unfolding age of scientific revolution will only intensify nature’s alienating effect. This analysis essay seeks to compare the two poems’ treatment of the natural world as a foundation for human existence. While William Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud romanticizes the rewards of being in synch with nature, Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach warns about the perils of human advances that irreconcilably upset the natural order.
Wordsworth’s poem argues that humanity and nature are not distinct but intertwined. Peering through the title that misleadingly portends an aura of loneliness, one immediately realizes that the poem is generally optimistic about the world. In the opening of the first stanza, the speaker laments about loneliness and then quickly notices the company of “a host of golden daffodils” “dancing” delicately to produce long-lasting effects (Wordsworth, lines 4-6). A reader then learns about a sense of unity between humanity, symbolized by the speaker, and nature, represented by the daffodils. The poet strengthens this concept using personification, whereby the persona is compared to a “cloud” floating over hills and valleys (lines 1-2). This line suggests that humans can assume the traits of nature and vice versa, thus oneness.
Another benefit of harmonizing the human existence with the rhythm of nature is purpose. In I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, the persona’s memories of the beauty of the daffodils promise a permanent source of pleasure. They revitalize his life whenever he feels empty, bored, or pensive. He can transcend his immediate circumstances and escape to a place where he is safe from the nuisances of this life, and his heart can freely “dance with the daffodils” (line 24). Ironically, Wordsworth proposes that nature’s beauty, if only people can learn to connect with and appreciate it, can dampen human suffering.
Wordsworth’s poem revolves around the central idea that humans need to create a strong bond with the natural world to realize true happiness. The connection between man and nature and the resultant effects are not instinctive and require retrospection to discern. The persona in I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud “gazed – and gazed” at the daffodils’ beauty, but the experience only “flashed” in his mind later, enabling him to realize the full significance of the aquatic plants (lines 17, 21). It was from this reminiscence that the speaker drew true happiness. “The stars,” “sparkling waves” and daffodils represent the unity of the wider universe, humanity, and less noticeable aspects of nature. The unified nature guarantees beauty, survival, and joy, all of which fill the persona with enduring ecstasy and pleasure. Overall, the poem contends that communion with nature is a great source of joy and a long-lasting sense of deeper meaning.
The idea of nature as a source of happiness subject to people’s ability to coexist intimately with it is also stressed in Arnold’s Dover Beach. While dissecting the reality of the new world in the bleakness of waning faith, the persona’s true feelings and reflective capabilities are recorded through nature. For example, the speaker invites his lover to enjoy the majesty of nature; the tranquil sea, the vast horizon where the sea and “moon-blanched land” converge, famous cliffs, and sound waves echoed from the seashore (Arnold, line 8). The poem thus reminds readers that love affirms the majesty of nature and the extent to which it governs our sense of happiness. In other words, love cannot exist in isolation from nature. Most importantly, it is only by uniting with nature that the speaker can realize and describe how the world has lost the beauty it once bore with pride and the implications of such a loss.
Contrary to Wordsworth’s poem that primarily highlights the incalculable rewards of living in communion with nature, Arnold posits that nature antagonizes human progress, and upsetting it could attract catastrophic consequences. Notably, Arnold expands the limits of nature by revealing how it interlinks with the concepts of faith and Christianity or deity. The poet analyses how humans relate with and depend on the Supreme Being for true knowledge. Consequently, the poem reveals how a clash between the modern world and religion has diminished faith, ultimately corroding the beauty of the world and ushering in an “eternal note of sadness” (line 14).
For Arnold, nature is not an imprint of bliss but an insignia of misery that has haunted every generation. “Long ago,” Sophocles, too, “heard” the sounds of the “Ægean,” reminding him of “the turbid ebb and flow of human misery” (lines 21-24). Every epoch has been riddled with despair, and nature is the only surviving witness. The speaker is hereby reminding readers that suffering is a universal experience, and nature serves as an enduring reminder that it is a fundamental fact worth accepting, not denying. It is in this universal suffering that faith found its relevance; it gave meaning to life, regardless of the circumstances that were clearly beyond humans’ sphere of influence or comprehension.
The Dover Beach depicts science as a defiant move against the grain of nature. Scientific advancements and conflicting opinions have incised a permanent scar on the people’s faith in God. To give the audience adequate insight into the new state of the world relative to past epochs, the poem indicts humanity for breaking away from nature. The speaker describes that a “Sea of Faith” once engulfed the “round earth’s shore,” uniting and illuminating everyone’s life like a “bright girdle” but the age of a common Christian faith in God passed, never to return.
The most dangerous consequence of departing from nature, conceptualized as replacing human faith in God with science, is the corruption of the world. The poem illustrates that only true love between those who still believe in God can help one survive in the widespread lack of “joy,” “love,” “light,” “certitude,” “and peace” (lines 31-34). The speaker further argues that departing from God allows ignorance to thrive, stalling dreams and increasing atrophy of the heart in the face of human suffering.
These two poems are more than a century old, but they testify that poetry is a time-defiant mirror, allowing one to reflect on society. In the 21st century, much praise can be heaped on science, but it can never overshadow the growing awareness of the dangers of abusing nature. Global warming sends shivers across the spine of every country as increasing bouts of starvation, death, and natural disasters register more frequently, thanks to industrialization. For once, many people are realizing that the loss of faith in nature was a fatal mistake. Science promises too many ambitious goals that it eventually fails to attain or achieve at far greater environmental cost than anticipated. For example, rapid technological growth is worth celebrating for reducing the globe to a proverbial village and speeding up economic growth. On the other, rarely revealed side, a worse monster than what humans feared was born: capitalism.
Under capitalistic systems of economic governance, abnormal profits can be made, but at the expense of the most vulnerable in society. Humans are so preoccupied with the quest for personal success they have grown numb to the pain and suffering of an increasing number of people cast to the deplorable ends of the economic scale as the gap between the rich and the indigent widens. Under these circumstances, one can comfortably say that the worst fears in Dover Beach are no longer dismissible as fictional. Because of ingrained greed, people have lost touch with nature and wrongly equate development with creating empires in which the sun never sets. As a result, it is becoming increasingly impossible to reconnect with nature to derive the satisfaction, meaning, and joy that I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud envisions.
In conclusion, this essay analyses William Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud and Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach, with a special interest in how they rely on nature to understand the world. While Wordsworth believes in the riches, meaning, love, and happiness society can draw by living in harmony with the natural order, Arnold posits that humanity is merely a tiny part of the natural world, and it suffers more than it benefits by provoking mother nature. The two poems challenge contemporary society to be mindful of the level to which it trusts what it perceives as development and how it affects its relationship with what remains beyond the human capacity to comprehend.
Works Cited
Arnold, Matthew. “Dover Beach.” Merrill, 1867. Attached.
Wordsworth, William. “I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud”. 1807. Attached.