The Prelude: Wordsworth and Solitude

          Being in a class wherein finding the answer to the question "What is Nature?" is the primary focus has significantly modified my reading strategies; I now mostly scan the assigned readings for eco-key words (such as nature, green, environment, etc.) and focus on those, as opposed to approaching the text with as few expectations as possible (as is my custom). Therefore I found myself doing just that when I began reading Wordsworth's The Prelude. That is to say, I sifted through lines and lines of verse in an active attempt to ferret out 1.) what the word "nature" means to Wordsworth, 2.) what is his philosophical viewpoint on the role nature plays in the greater scheme of things (e.g., is it a resource to be used, a deity to be worshipped, a thing to be put on a higher level of importance than man in some cosmological hierarchy, or ultimately a mere canvass for some grand painting of humanity) and what is the proper or ethical relation of human beings to this "natural" world.
          While I found that nature is indeed many things to Wordsworth--such as a "spirit of (wisdom) of the Universe," and a "Soul that art the eternity of thought"--one aspect of his conception of nature that stood out to me was its ability to afford solitude or shelter to one who would seek it. Specifically referring to the beginning of the piece up to around line 500, nature to Wordsworth is the anti-city, the place where others are not. Apparently for Wordsworth this solitude is a good thing: he fetishizes a "lonely scene more lonesome," and relishes the aloneness of the "gloomy hills" through which he walked "homeward ... in solitude." Nature in this way is a sort of escape, a retreat, a lonesome cottage in the woods where the poet can turn down the mental noise of everyday concerns and turn up the volume on profundity and philosophic clarity, hone his craft and in a sense contemplate the bigger picture. What is really being exalted here is the power of the mind and or imagination, and nature is simply the vehicle, or the ideal setting to unleash the mind's full poetic potential.