Nature’s Surprise

When reading “The Tables Turned” I imaged “Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct”. It talks about learning through nature by explaining the way nature works and looks. This image has a very well perception of nature, this is what someone imagines when they think of nature, the three main things. It has sunlight, water and mountains, something about having the three things make it peaceful and it is very typical.

In the lines:

“The sun, above the mountain’s head,

A freshening lustre mellow

Through all the long green fields has spread,

His first sweet evening yellow.”

The image has a hint of ‘evening yellow’ and the mountain top touches that yellow that Wordsworth mentions. The painting only supports what the friend is being told, that nature is beautiful and many things can be leaned from it if we observe it. The atmosphere and the way it is being described makes it seem like this is the perfect place to learn. Especially when it is said that “sweet is the lore which nature brings”. If he would just put his books down and open up to all the things around him he could learn things that a book will not be able to. There are so many ‘barren leaves’ that he could look and dissect and take in. He is being persuaded to learn from nature and if this image was show to him or if this had been what he saw when he put the books down, he would have jumped at the opportunity to take it all in.

The overall take from this poem is that we should take in nature every once in a while because we might be surprised with what we might learn especially if our view looked something like Theodore Gericault.

-Sandy Morelos

Who is Brother Jim?

In We are Seven the narrator is caught in a paradoxical conversation with a little girl; what appeared to be about death. This dilemma begins when the narrator reiterates the little girl’s words “You say that two at Conway dwell,/ And two are gone to sea,/ Yet you are seven; I pray you tell/ Sweet Maid how this may be?” (ll. 25-9). Only to get an irritating response “‘Seven girls and boys are we;/ Two of us in the church-yard lie,/ beneath the church-yard tree’” as if proposing a riddle like a sphinx proposed to Oedipus (31-2). Except, the narrator does not know the little girl’s reason for believing that they are still seven even despite all his attempt to explain that they are not seven anymore if her siblings are dead. This paradox seem to be carried even beyond the narrators and the little girl’s conversation when we ask ourselves: who is Brother Jim?

Jim is only mentioned once in the poem; and that is at the beginning when the narrator begins to speak “ A simple child, dear brother Jim” as if writing a letter in a sort of distorted, backward way. It seems that this poem takes place in the narrator’s mind. A paradoxical moment that he seem to always come back to only in thought in a place that also brings back those memories. That is why I propose, that Caspar’s 1809 painting The Monk by the Sea fits the actual description of the poem. In the painting the sky an overwhelming sky scenery of the sky which seems to be in the midst of twilight. Then is split in the middle horizontally with a “black sea” followed by a monk in the center left hand side of the painting, overlooking the open sea and sky. This eerie representation depicts the way in which the poem opens up, in thought and conversation with another person, except, there is no response, only in his thoughts he can hear the replies from the little girl that would not budge from admiting in words, that her siblings had passed away.

The poem of the monk depict similar themes of self reflection. Yet, we are still in thought, about who in the world is Jim. In the context of the poem, the narrator refers to Jim as a “brother.” This also adds another parallel theme about family. Nonetheless, Death is the biggest topic that connects all of the themes especially the topic about family and self reflection. Could the narrator be experiencing a reflection about how he treated his family and reflecting on how different and innocent the little girl viewed her own siblings despite them being deadthough it seems that she does not seem to be delusional about death because she describes how both her siblings died “the first that died was little Jane” (l 49). In the end the poem as a whole offers the perspective that the narrator too has lost his brother and is reflecting on the paradoxical thinking the girl had in his recollection of a memory perhaps, and perhaps through this reference of memory he may reach some sort of spiritual enlightenment to reconnect with his Brother Jim like the little girl so seemingly easy she made it seem. Leaving the speaker in a frustrated and may I say, skeptical state of mind

“‘But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!’
‘Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have he’r will,
And said, ‘Nay, we are seven!”

Enrique Ramos

Hippies of the 18th century

For me, “The Tables Turned” by William Wordsworth is represented in Théodore Gericault’s Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct. On a superficial level, the painting shows how one should immerse themselves in nature and enjoy the world around them, rather than live their lives through the guidance of books and science as noted by Wordsworth. For instance, in “The Tables Turned”, the speaker says, “Up! Up! My friend, and quit your books” because “Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife”. The speaker notes how living life and learning about life through books is not the right way to gain knowledge, they must “hear the woodland linnet…there’s more of wisdom in it”. It seems that for the reader, learning is an experience that cannot be encompassed through books and science. We must learn from nature, something that has not been interpreted or created by man. We must reach our own interpretations of the world by going out into the world itself rather than reading about what other people have to say about it, for “one impulse from a vernal wood may teach you more of man, of moral evil and of good, than all the sages can”. I feel that the same idea is invoked in Gericault’s painting. The men in the painting do not seem to care about anything that is going on around them, they are just swimming the water naked. They have stripped away from science and knowledge that would find being naked in the wild as something absurd. The one who is clothed, is not fully clothed as if they are the person the speaker of the poem is trying to convince to be one with nature. The color of the sun is very warm, indicating it is a late part of the day that I often find to be the most peaceful time of the day. It seems that time does not exist in the painting, for the people do not even seem to care that the day is almost at an end, they are still enjoying their time outside.

-Nancy Sanchez

A Lake of Despair, A Sky of Repair

The setting of the painting by Caspar David Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea, can be described in the poem “The Thorn” because the speaker is standing on the mountain edge, describing the nature surrounding them,”High on a mountain’s highest ridge, / Where oft the stormy winter ridge / Cuts like a scythe, while through the clouds / It sweeps from vale to vale” (103). I thought the description of the scenery was similar to the painting because the figure in the painting is standing on a rocky ground. I could picture the rocky ground being the edge of a mountain cliff above a dark blue sea. The ocean is an ebony black while the sky is gray but you can see a hint of sunlight that illustrates that the sun is hiding from view. In addition to the difference in height, the sharp color contrast between the ocean and sky makes the painting seem more mysterious because the scenery conveys a miserable, empty sea but a hopeful sunrise. It is as if the mood of the painting is cut between the sea and the sky which is where the simile, “Cuts like a scythe,” seems to apply.

The background surrounding the ocean looks as if it could be a snowy forest with mountains further away due to how the dark green and black shaded objects rise above the ocean but the wide light gray peaks manage to touch the sky, “You must take care and chuse your time / The mountain when to cross. / For oft there sits, between the heap / That’s like an infant’s grave in size”(105).

It could also be that the dark murky waters are not a sea but a lake, “And that same pond of which I spoke.” The small figure standing in the middle of the painting overlooking the lake and mountains could also be a woman because we only see the back of their body which is obscured by the cloak they are wearing and the poem describes a character similarly, “A woman in a scarlet cloak, / And to herself she cries, / Oh misery! oh misery! / Oh woe is me! oh misery!” (105). The woman in the poem is in despair because her lover has abandoned her and her unborn child. The painting reflects the mood of the poem because the woman is in a mentally, emotionally and spiritually dark, depressing place. The cloak blends in with the lake as if to demonstrate that the woman is surrounding herself with this negative energy of loss and grief especially since in some cultures, water represents life. Therefore, she has disrupted the flow of life due to killing her baby.

-Ana Diaz-Galvan