Nature in Tennyson's Poems

Abstract

Nature, existence of animals and world are interrelated. World is a place to live and she without Nature, cannot be imagined. This Nature is the center of all activities of all people and animals of this world. Writers of all ages have praised, worshipped, painted, narrated or depicted this Nature in their works. Thus, some poets are called poets of nature, others are known as worshippers of nature, while some are presenters of nature, including human nature. Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) is a great Victorian poet of Nature. But he is not like William Wordsworth or Robert Frost. His attitude towards Nature is as it is. He is a dualist. He is both a lover and a pessimist. He takes Nature scientifically and philosophically. He is not a pantheist like Wordsworth or a pessimist like Thomas Hardy. He is a Victorian poet who faced the Victorian Compromise, - the compromise between science and religion. He admires the beauty, peace and power of Nature along with its cruelty and indifference. His treatment of Nature is complex and realistic, which it is not like William Wordsworth, Robert Frost and Thomas Hardy or like other Romantic poets. To him, Nature is beautiful and inspiring, yet at times cruel and indifferent; it is a source of philosophical and spiritual questioning about God, life, death, and immortality, a means of expressing human emotions and ideas, and a realistic representation of the natural world. If we study some of his famous poems like- “Oenone”, “The Lotos- Eaters”, “Ulysses”, “Tithonus”, ‘Locksley Hall” and “The Palace of Art”, his attitude towards Nature and her presentation in these poems will be clear to us.