“It is a beauteous evening, calm and free” by William Wordsworth: Worshipping the Divine in Nature

Caspar David Friedrich

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquility;
The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the Sea;
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder—everlastingly.
Dear child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year;
And worshipp’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.

In this sonnet, Wordsworth expresses what amounts to a religious adoration of nature. He is on the beach at sunset, observing the sun as it sets into the sea. And while Wordsworth’s spiritual connection with nature is obvious by the words of worship that appear throughout the poem, there two lines which really emphasize how much he views nature as a manifestation of the divine.

In line 5 he writes: “The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the Sea.” What is telling about this line is that the word “heaven” is not capitalized, therefore asserting that heaven is not the abode of the divine. But “Sea” is capitalized. This emphasis on the earthly contrasted with the de-emphasis on heaven suggests that Wordsworth believes God resides within nature, and not in some unreachable heavenly abode. And in the next line, he takes the metaphor even further, referring to the Sea as “the mighty Being,” implying not only that nature is the residence of God, but that nature is, in fact, God incarnate.

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