Taking Place One Evening

I always find it intriguing when a book tells me to stop reading and go outside. I understand the sentiment that nature is amazing and we learn so much from it, but there is an inherent contradiction in the message.

In “The Tables Turned: An Evening Scene on the Same Subject” by William Wordsworth, readers are presented with a speaker who is berating the reader or some unknown character. The speaker says, “Books! ‘tis a dull and endless strife,/ Come, here the woodland linnet,/ How sweet his music; on my life/ There’s more of wisdom in it” (9-12). The speaker tells the reader to go outside, experience nature and learn from her, but how can the reader know that this is what they should do if they do not read the poem? It seems fruitless because it is ignoring how much we learn from books and newspapers. Wordsworth is either making a statement or responding to a statement in this poem. It is possible that another person told him to stop writing and reading and that he should instead go outside, but it is hard to tell.

Knowing that Wordsworth was experiencing a ‘crisis’ when he returned from France, the line “Sweet is the lore which nature brings;/ Our meddling intellect/ Mishapes the beauteous forms of things;/ -- We murder to dissect” (25-28) leads me to believe that this is an idea Wordsworth himself wanted to say.  I think it was a reaction to happenings he experienced. The part about our intellect and our ever-growing fascination with solving everything makes me think he needed it to stop. He got tired of the excessive analysis of theories, crimes, society, and wars. He wanted people to remember that there is more than “toil and trouble” (2) to be seen; that there may be horrible things happening in the world, and they are pertinent, but there is still so much life to be had as long as people are willing to look for it.