Wordsworth's Poetical Works Lesson Plan

Compare the styles and messages of "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold" and "Nature is what we see." What is each poet trying to tell us? How do they do so?

"My Heart Leaps Up" is more centered on the individual first-person speaker's experience of natural phenomena and how it sustains his joy. It focuses on one natural thing, a rainbow, and departs into the speaker's mind to show how the rainbow works on him. "Nature is what we see" does not include anything about the speaker's "I," focusing instead on listing many things the speaker hears and sees in Nature. The wonder of Nature is conveyed by Dickinson's...