Compare and contrast “Mont Blanc” and “Tintern Abbey,” how do Wordsworth and Shelley view the relationship between humans and nature in different ways?

Wordsworth and Shelley both draw inspiration from nature, but they do so in profoundly different ways. Wordsworth’s definition of poetry (from the preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1802, that “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity”) is well represented by "Tintern Abbey," in which the poet revisits the scenic abbey and is drawn into a kind of poetic trance,

that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.

Shelley also draws poetic inspiration from nature, but his response to it is more primal and has less to do with tranquility recollection than shock and awe. For Shelley, nature is powerful and active, beautiful and terrible; he writes, in a passage that resembles Wordsworth’s,

Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee I seem as in a trance sublime and strange To muse on my own separate fantasy

One difference is that where Wordsworth‘s poetic inspiration is empathetic, Shelley’s is about unleashing the imagination. Unlike Wordsworth, who enters the poetic state to unite with nature, for Shelley, nature is remote and separate, a terrible teacher:

The works and ways of man, their death and birth,And that of him and all that his may be; All things that move and breathe with toil and sound Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell. Power dwells apart in its tranquillity, Remote, serene, and inaccessible: And this, the naked countenance of earth,On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains Teach the adverting mind.

We can see that Shelley’s sensibility is fundamentally different than Wordsworth’s. Shelley’s concept of the poet is that of a person who, through the force of imagination, is able to contend with the primal realities of existence; in this way the poet is able to view “the naked countenance of the earth,” and the knowledge he receives is not a recapitulation of past emotions but an insight into the very nature of existence: the realization that ”all things...are born and die” and that whatever ”power” there is in the world is “apart” and unconcerned, “remote, serene, and inaccessible.”

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