{"id":110368,"date":"2025-05-17T14:57:32","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T20:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=110368"},"modified":"2025-05-17T14:57:32","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T20:57:32","slug":"sweet-is-the-lore-which-nature-brings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2025\/05\/sweet-is-the-lore-which-nature-brings.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Sweet is the lore which Nature brings&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_34532\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-34532\" style=\"width: 597px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/06\/Grasmere_-_geograph.org_.uk_-_1548805.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-34532\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/06\/Grasmere_-_geograph.org_.uk_-_1548805.jpg\" alt=\"Grasmere, lake with village\" width=\"597\" height=\"400\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-34532\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A view of Grasmere, in the Lake District (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Our group headed up to the Lake District today, devoting much of our time to William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and to his wife, Mary, and his sister, Dorothy, who were both very important elements of his life and his creativity. \u00a0It might seem odd that a tour focused on Latter-day Saint history should devote the better part of a day to the greatest of the English Romantic poets, but it makes entire sense to me. \u00a0For one thing, Grasmere and the Lake District are very beautiful. \u00a0(We also enjoyed a half-hour boat cruise on Lake Windermere, in the best weather that I can recall having in the area, a beautiful, sunny day at just the right temperature.) \u00a0For another reason, Wordsworth\u2019s thinking seems to me (and not to me alone) to resonate in a particularly wonderful way with central concepts of the Restoration. \u00a0So far as I\u2019m aware, his only documented reference to the topic is an inquiry, addressed to his American publisher, about the \u201cwretched\u201d sect that his niece had joined. \u00a0(His publisher wrote back to say that he knew very little about \u201cMormonism,\u201d but that Joseph Smith was an imposter.) \u00a0Had he understood our doctrine, though, I think that he might have found it less \u201cwretched\u201d than he imagined it to be. \u00a0I\u2019ll attempt to explain why, in at least one respect.<\/p>\n<p>First, I cite a poem of his called\u00a0\u201cThe Tables Turned,\u201d in which he expresses his life-long deep love for the natural world. \u00a0(It\u2019s not by chance or mere whim that he chose to live in the Lake District, with its hills and mountains and waterfalls and lakes, above anywhere else, and to be buried at St. Oswald\u2019s church in Grasmere rather than in Westminster Abbey.). I apologize for the fact that I\u2019ve been unable to preserve the formatting and the stanza-structure of the poems that I cite here, but they should still be clear enough to understand:. \u00a0Here\u2019s \u201cThe Tables Turned\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div>Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;<\/div>\n<div>Or surely you\u2019ll grow double:<\/div>\n<div>Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;<\/div>\n<div>Why all this toil and trouble?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The sun above the mountain\u2019s head,<\/div>\n<div>A freshening lustre mellow<\/div>\n<div>Through all the long green fields has spread,<\/div>\n<div>His first sweet evening yellow.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Books! \u2019tis a dull and endless strife:<\/div>\n<div>Come, hear the woodland linnet,<\/div>\n<div>How sweet his music! on my life,<\/div>\n<div>There\u2019s more of wisdom in it.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!<\/div>\n<div>He, too, is no mean preacher:<\/div>\n<div>Come forth into the light of things,<\/div>\n<div>Let Nature be your teacher.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>She has a world of ready wealth,<\/div>\n<div>Our minds and hearts to bless\u2014<\/div>\n<div>Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,<\/div>\n<div>Truth breathed by cheerfulness.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>One impulse from a vernal wood<\/div>\n<div>May teach you more of man,<\/div>\n<div>Of moral evil and of good,<\/div>\n<div>Than all the sages can.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;<\/div>\n<div>Our meddling intellect<\/div>\n<div>Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:\u2014<\/div>\n<div>We murder to dissect.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Enough of Science and of Art;<\/div>\n<div>Close up those barren leaves;<\/div>\n<div>Come forth, and bring with you a heart<\/div>\n<div>That watches and receives.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<figure id=\"attachment_34534\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-34534\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/06\/Wordsworth_family_plot.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-34534\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/06\/Wordsworth_family_plot.jpg\" alt=\"Wordsworth's last resting place\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-34534\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Wordsworth family plot at St. Oswald\u2019s Church, in Grasmere village. We have made the pilgrimage here several times previously. \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>But the mundane world about us dulls our sensibilities; we become, very literally, disenchanted. \u00a0We forget that we are pilgrims and strangers here and we begin to settle in, losing our divine homesickness, our yearning for a better reality. \u00a0Here is the entirety of his \u201cThe World is Too Much with Us\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div>The world is too much with us; late and soon,<\/div>\n<div>Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;\u2014<\/div>\n<div>Little we see in Nature that is ours;<\/div>\n<div>We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!<\/div>\n<div>This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;<\/div>\n<div>The winds that will be howling at all hours,<\/div>\n<div>And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;<\/div>\n<div>For this, for everything, we are out of tune;<\/div>\n<div>It moves us not. Great God! I\u2019d rather be<\/div>\n<div>A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;<\/div>\n<div>So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,<\/div>\n<div>Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;<\/div>\n<div>Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;<\/div>\n<div>Or hear old Triton blow his wreath\u00e8d horn.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<figure id=\"attachment_34623\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-34623\" style=\"width: 597px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/06\/Ennerdale_Cumbria.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-34623\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/06\/Ennerdale_Cumbria.jpg\" alt=\"B&amp;W of Ennerdale, Lake District\" width=\"597\" height=\"448\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-34623\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ennerdale, Cumbria, in the English Lake District<br>(Photograph by Tom Courtney)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) expressed a related sentiment in \u201cGod\u2019s Grandeur\u201d:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<div>The world is charged with the grandeur of God.<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil<\/div>\n<div>Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?<\/div>\n<div>Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And wears man\u2019s smudge and shares man\u2019s smell: the soil<\/div>\n<div>Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>And for all this, nature is never spent;<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;<\/div>\n<div>And though the last lights off the black West went<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs \u2014<\/div>\n<div>Because the Holy Ghost over the bent<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<figure id=\"attachment_34592\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-34592\" style=\"width: 597px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/06\/800px-Derwent_Water_Lake_District_Cumbria_-_June_2009.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-34592\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/06\/800px-Derwent_Water_Lake_District_Cumbria_-_June_2009.jpg\" alt=\"Lake District, Cumbria\" width=\"597\" height=\"301\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-34592\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A scene in Cumbria\u2019s Lake District (Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Wordsworth\u2019s passion for nature, which he describes as having been rather direct and raw and even unreflective during his early years, gradually settled later on into a calmer affection. \u00a0He recognized that there was loss in the passage of time, but he also thought that there was some gain, as well. \u00a0He expresses this throughout his \u201cLines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798,\u201d from which I cite a passage here. \u00a0Behind nature, he discerns something much more powerful, something divine:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div>For nature then<\/div>\n<div>(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days<\/div>\n<div>And their glad animal movements all gone by)<\/div>\n<div>To me was all in all.\u2014I cannot paint<\/div>\n<div>What then I was. The sounding cataract<\/div>\n<div>Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,<\/div>\n<div>The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,<\/div>\n<div>Their colours and their forms, were then to me<\/div>\n<div>An appetite; a feeling and a love,<\/div>\n<div>That had no need of a remoter charm,<\/div>\n<div>By thought supplied, nor any interest<\/div>\n<div>Unborrowed from the eye.\u2014That time is past,<\/div>\n<div>And all its aching joys are now no more,<\/div>\n<div>And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this<\/div>\n<div>Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts<\/div>\n<div>Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,<\/div>\n<div>Abundant recompense. For I have learned<\/div>\n<div>To look on nature, not as in the hour<\/div>\n<div>Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes<\/div>\n<div>The still sad music of humanity,<\/div>\n<div>Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power<\/div>\n<div>To chasten and subdue.\u2014And I have felt<\/div>\n<div>A presence that disturbs me with the joy<\/div>\n<div>Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime<\/div>\n<div>Of something far more deeply interfused,<\/div>\n<div>Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,<\/div>\n<div>And the round ocean and the living air,<\/div>\n<div>And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:<\/div>\n<div>A motion and a spirit, that impels<\/div>\n<div>All thinking things, all objects of all thought,<\/div>\n<div>And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still<\/div>\n<div>A lover of the meadows and the woods<\/div>\n<div>And mountains; and of all that we behold<\/div>\n<div>From this green earth . . .<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<figure id=\"attachment_34533\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-34533\" style=\"width: 597px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/06\/800px-Grasmere_Dove_Cottage_120508w.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-34533\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/06\/800px-Grasmere_Dove_Cottage_120508w.jpg\" alt=\"Wordsworth's House\" width=\"597\" height=\"448\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-34533\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dove Cottage, in the village of Grasmere (Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Through nature, though, Wordsworth also senses echoes of the still-greater glory of another world, the pre-existent world from which we all come. \u00a0But he senses them ever more faintly because, with the passage of time, we\u2019re distracted and our perception of them dims. \u00a0Here are some lines from his \u201cOde: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.\u201d \u00a0A few of them will be very familiar to some Latter-day Saints:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>The child is father of the man;<\/em><br>\n<em>And I could wish my days to be<\/em><br>\n<em>Bound each to each by natural piety.<\/em><br>\nThere was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,<br>\nThe earth, and every common sight,<br>\nTo me did seem<br>\nApparelled in celestial light,<br>\nThe glory and the freshness of a dream.<br>\nIt is not now as it hath been of yore;\u2014<br>\nTurn wheresoe\u2019er I may,<br>\nBy night or day.<br>\nThe things which I have seen I now can see no more.<\/p>\n<p>The Rainbow comes and goes,<br>\nAnd lovely is the Rose,<br>\nThe Moon doth with delight<br>\nLook round her when the heavens are bare,<br>\nWaters on a starry night<br>\nAre beautiful and fair;<br>\nThe sunshine is a glorious birth;<br>\nBut yet I know, where\u2019er I go,<br>\nThat there hath past away a glory from the earth. . . .<\/p>\n<p>Whither is fled the visionary gleam?<br>\nWhere is it now, the glory and the dream?<\/p>\n<p>Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:<br>\nThe Soul that rises with us, our life\u2019s Star,<br>\nHath had elsewhere its setting,<br>\nAnd cometh from afar:<br>\nNot in entire forgetfulness,<br>\nAnd not in utter nakedness,<br>\nBut trailing clouds of glory do we come<br>\nFrom God, who is our home:<br>\nHeaven lies about us in our infancy!<br>\nShades of the prison-house begin to close<br>\nUpon the growing Boy,<br>\nBut he beholds the light, and whence it flows,<br>\nHe sees it in his joy;<br>\nThe Youth, who daily farther from the east<br>\nMust travel, still is Nature\u2019s Priest,<br>\nAnd by the vision splendid<br>\nIs on his way attended;<br>\nAt length the Man perceives it die away,<br>\nAnd fade into the light of common day.<\/p>\n<p>Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;<br>\nYearnings she hath in her own natural kind,<br>\nAnd, even with something of a Mother\u2019s mind,<br>\nAnd no unworthy aim,<br>\nThe homely Nurse doth all she can<br>\nTo make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,<br>\nForget the glories he hath known,<br>\nAnd that imperial palace whence he came.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"type-paragraph-sm rich-text pl-6 italic\">\n<div class=\"type-paragraph-sm rich-text pl-6 italic\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"relative\" data-v-1a293654=\"\">\n<div class=\"annotations-active\" data-v-1a293654=\"\">\n<div class=\"rich-text copy-large\" data-v-1a293654=\"\" data-v-5bf99d9e=\"\">\n<div class=\"poem-body overflow-x-clip\" data-v-5bf99d9e=\"\">\n<div style=\"text-align: right;\">Posted from Preston, Lancashire, England<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Our group headed up to the Lake District today, devoting much of our time to William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and to his wife, Mary, and his sister, Dorothy, who were both very important elements of his life and his creativity. \u00a0It might seem odd that a tour focused on Latter-day Saint history should devote the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":34532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36222,6525,36220,36212,36214,19514],"class_list":["post-110368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dove-cottage","tag-gerard-manley-hopkins","tag-grasmere","tag-intimations-of-immortality","tag-tintern-abbey","tag-wordsworth"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&quot;Sweet is the lore which Nature brings&quot;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&nbsp; Our group headed up to the Lake District today, devoting much of our time to William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and to his wife, Mary, and his sister,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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