William Wordsworth’s Philosophy Of Nature As To Love Nature Is To Love God As Portrayed In ‘Tintern Abbey’: A Study From Islamic Perspective

Abstract

Human beings are created by God and they have been given some instructions to obey Him. God has laid down some guidelines for His creatures to follow but has not limited any ways to feel Him, to obey Him or to think about Him. Thus some find the existence of the Great God in human beings, some feel Him in the religious scriptures, and some others seek the existence of the Divinity in the sky, wind, clouds, birds etc. Customarily/Accordingly, William Wordsworth, one of the composers of Lyrical Ballads which marked the beginning of what is called romanticism, is observed to find the existence of God in the natural phenomena. A close perusal of his poetries especially ‘Tintern Abbey’ gives us a crystal clear idea of what William Wordsworth has regarded as pantheism-the belief that God exists in nature. This paper, besides showing his pantheistic philosophy as portrayed in the selected poem, will also focus on how the poet has messaged the readers that if anyone desires to love Allah or worship Him, s/he should start loving natural objects like meadows, wind, waterfalls, setting sun, sky, trees, waves of the ocean, living air, woods, mountains etc. because nature does not betray the heart that loves her. Based on the ideas of shirk (partnership with Allah) as delineated in the Holy Quran, the present research will also spot light on whether this special belief of Wordsworth is a kind of shirk or not. Both primary as well as secondary resources have been explored with a view to giving this writing a successful shape.