The last several lines (42-47) of the first part of “Poems
on the Naming of Places” introduce the theme of immortality, to be idealized in
several modes further on in the lines, but given here as a person remembered by
the placed once idly named for her. Similarly, and likely not coincidentally, lines
38-39 of “Michael” are an echo, wherein the poet speaks of his own
immortalization in both the poets who survive him and the hills which he has immortalized
in verse. This memorializing of natural objects through poetry hints at an
answer to a question we have been asking since the beginning of the course: Why
do we want the world to end? Why does apocalyptic thinking so intrigue us, especially now? Reading Lyrical Ballads has made me even more aware of our waning
access to these hills, trees, craggy rocks that sometimes look like people, and
all other natural objects captured in the text, and fill me with a kind of
mourning. This apocalyptic yearning means we would rather see our human world
break apart and disappear than subsist on the increasingly barren and wasting
corpses that were once the beautiful artworks “made by Nature for herself” (V;
15). These romantic poets tried to capture for their readers, the “few natural
hearts” (Michael, 36), the great emotions that their experiences with the
environment occasioned, but in sad irony (or totally on purpose?) the beauty in
the lines far outshines what’s left of beauty in this post-post-industrial
environment, excepting what has been preserved in our national and state parks.
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