To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass)

I have just returned from the Lake District and felt it was fitting to share some of my favourite Wordsworth poems. Whilst the Gothicism of the Lakes was acute, the centrality of Wordsworth’s work is a saturation of Romanticism. Reading such in the presence of the Lake ’s dramatic sublimity made this almost heady. What is clear from his poetic work is its focalisation of the self and its interdependence with the natural world. So although a sense of solitude and poignant emptiness manifested itself in the landscape, simultaneously a deeper relationship with one’s surroundings is established. There is both absence and presence.   ‘The Boat- Stealing Episode’ (1799) They guided me: one evening, led by them, I went alone into a Shepherd’s boat, A skiff that to a willow-tree was tied Within a rocky cave, its usual home; The moon was up, the lake was shining clear Among the hoary mountains: from the shore I pushed, and struck the oars, and struck again In caden...