Wordsworth Condemns False Liberty

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells;
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased of some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

-William Wordsworth

Traditional Catholics rightly complain about the distorted misconceptions of liberty that have played so great a role in the destruction of culture and the loss of souls. Many would be surprised to find an ally in Wordsworth, a poet who is typically associated with pantheism and with the Romantic desire to shatter all limitations placed on the spirit. Indeed, the young Wordsworth was an ardent supporter of the French Revolution, and his writings influenced popular pantheistic movements for generations including the Transcendentalists of our own New England. However, his early admiration for Liberty did not last. Wordsworth changed his mind after he learned of the mass murder that had been done in the name of "Reason." This change is on the one hand related to the cult of the passions normally associated with Romanticism, but it is also related to a revival of interest in medieval culture and religion, and thus we often find that Romantics will favor Catholic over Protestant symbolism. Obviously we cannot confuse this with a true revival of Catholic thought or morality in England, but someone who can help others recognize the Catholic Faith as being esthetically, culturally, and psychologically well-ordered within the walls of apostate England and despite the influence of the Revolution is worth considering. Though pantheism and passion-worship may be the primary influence of Wordsworth, indirectly the movement of which he was the head had a significant influence on the Oxford Movement as well as on the later literary revival we know primarily through Chesterton. For his part, Wordsworth became more and more conservative as his life went on, but the subtlety I feel distinguishes him from the stereotypical Romantic can be seen even in this early sonnet.

Concerning the poem itself: I like that it begins with the high vocation of religious life, then moves to intellectual works, manual labor, and even into the natural world, allowing us to see that the same principle is at work throughout all of nature. In applying the principle to his own task as a poet, he ultimately makes a convincing case against the chaotic tendencies that would later develop into literary modernism.

This article by Joseph Pearce is of related interest: http://www.univforum.org/pdf/378_Pierce_Revival_1003_ENG.pdf