Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return;
The poem begins with a rhetorical figure known as apostrophe, an address to a person or thing not present, a figure that Shelley utilizes frequently. The speaker of the poem introduces the reader to William Wordsworth by referring to him as a poet of nature: Wordsworth’s verse is well-known for dealing with the relationship of the poet to the natural world around him."Nature," with a capital N, was a very important key term for the Romantics. In the thought of the Enlightenment, which preceded the Romantics and exerted a deep influence on them, Nature had come to replace God at the center of the universe. God was no longer a separate, personal being that controlled nature from above, but merely the force or energy of the universe itself.
Wordsworth wrote much about Nature and its importance to the development of human sensibility and morality. For Shelley, such poetry was a powerful testament to the inherent goodness of Nature and hence provided support for the view that a moral life didn't require religious belief. These opening lines clearly allude to Wordsworth's great poem "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood," where Wordsworth reflects on and mourns the loss of his childlike relation to Nature: "There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, / The earth, and every common sight, / To me did seem / Apparelled in celestial light, / The glory and the freshness of a dream."
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
Shelley remarkably manages to boil down the essential themes of Wordsworth’s major and most well-known output into a single line. These ideas show up consistently as recurring motifs throughout much of Wordsworth's poetry. Shelley echoes the metaphor of the dream that Wordsworth himself used in the Intimations Ode, by likening the passing away of the wonder and innocence of childhood to waking up from a nice dream into a more mundane reality. "Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?" Wordsworth had asked in "Intimations."
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Shelley, in the kind of plain, unadorned language that Wordsworth made famous in his work, expresses his sympathy with the sentiments expressed in Wordsworth's poetry, such as the "Intimations" ode. The use of the word "common" here is a conscious choice by Shelley, and carries with it particular associations. Wordsworth and Coleridge had in their major work of 1798, the Lyrical Ballads, attempted to write in "the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society" to express "a natural delineation of human passions." That is, they used ordinary language to try to express ordinary feelings of ordinary people.
This in itself was a radical move to make in a book of poetry, and one that Shelley admired. He's expressing a shared solidarity with "the Commons"—everyday working people. But then Shelley introduces a breach between himself and Wordsworth: we're not told what particular "loss" is felt, and it isn't until later that we realize that the loss that is so deplorable—a very strong word to use—to Shelley is the loss of the Wordsworth who wrote poetry dedicated to "truth and liberty." The word "common" could also refer to the universal nature of the themes Shelley identifies. Everyone—not just Wordsworth —experiences the loss of childhood dreams, youth, friendship, and first love. However, not everyone turns away from their values to cope with this loss. The "one loss" refers to the change in Wordsworth, and Shelley knows that Wordsworth must also feel the difference in himself. While Wordsworth embraces a new set of conservative political values, Shelley criticizes the older poet's decision to diverge from his earlier work.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar;
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude;
In these lines, Shelley constructs two complicated similes, which create evocative imagery, to express two different sides, or views, of what Wordsworth's poetry meant to him. In the first simile, Wordsworth is like a star that guides a small ship ("bark") through a difficult journey in a winter storm at night. In the simile, Shelley is the ship and the journey can be considered that of life. Like a sailor following the north star to guide them in the right direction, Wordsworth's poetry showed Shelley the way. That Wordsworth is the "lone star" in the sky shows the prominent position he once held for Shelley as a poet worthy of imitation and admiration. The second simile expresses something similar, though the particular image brings a different resonance and different connotations. Here, Wordsworth is likened to a refuge or fortress built high up into the rock; there is much danger below from "the blind and battling multitude," but Wordsworth's poetry offers a safe haven, a place to escape from the constant and senseless struggle below. Again, Wordsworth is in a place of prominence, above all others.
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty
The phrase "honoured poverty" has two intertwined meanings here: on the one hand, Wordsworth lived a simple life on a relatively modest amount of money. But, like the use of the word "common" earlier in the poem, the "poverty" also refers to Wordsworth's choice to simplify the language of his verse, to use the language of the poor and the workers. For Shelley, both of these things were honorable. These two lines are a classic example of the way Shelley brilliantly used the line-break, or enjambment, in his poetry. "Weave" creates a visual, tactile metaphor for something airy and insubstantial: the voice. It also creates the expectation of a noun such as "tapestries," something that is actually woven, but instead, upsetting the reader's expectations, the noun following the line break is "Songs." Taken literally, this doesn't make much sense, but the metaphor of woven songs gives a sense of the subtle complexity of Wordsworth's poetry. Like a tapestry, it might seem simple on the surface, but when you look up close you realize that remarkable complexity and artistry are involved. But weaving was also a common job; handloom weavers were numerous, one of the most common jobs in small towns. "Songs consecrate to truth and liberty" brings to mind, in particular, a series of sonnets published in Wordsworth's book Poems, in Two Volumes (1807) and titled "Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty." These poems expressed political ideals that Shelley still held and that Wordsworth by 1814 had renounced.
Not quite ready to bury Wordsworth yet, however, Shelley offers one last glimpse of praise. He ends by voicing his true grievance with the older poet. Shelley seems to be asking that those who remember Wordsworth remember him less for his verse obsessed with common themes and more as the radical supporter of liberalism, progressivism and the fight for the truth which is required to enjoy liberty.
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.
These lines show Shelley as a master of syntax, and almost have an epigrammatic density to them. Wordsworth had deserted truth and liberty; his political about-face between his early work and The Excursion was so extreme in Shelley's eyes that he had become like another person, or rather, the Wordsworth that Shelley thought he knew had ceased to exist. (Shelley never met Wordsworth in person; he only knew him through his work.) It isn't until these final two lines that we understand that the loss that Shelley deplores is the loss of Wordsworth himself, the death of the "Poet of Nature." The evocation of the "Intimations" ode at the beginning is suddenly cast in a new light: just as the Wordsworth of the Ode mourns the loss of his childhood self, Shelley mourns the loss of the Wordsworth that he knew and loved during his youth.
After extolling Wordsworth as the leader of a radical generation who influences Shelley’s peers, the narrator finally buries the mentor with the suggesting this his current works are nothing but a reactionary rejection of that past. The imagery of grieving and ceasing to be underline Shelley’s contention that Wordsworth is, in the modern parlance, dead to him.
