Love in a Yew Tree

"Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree" is not the first poem we've read where nature and people are opposed. In "Expostulation and Reply" as well as in "The Tables Turned" Wordsworth argued that nature could teach a person more than books and science and art can. The difference is that this poem combines the two ideas, rather than directly argue that one is better than the other.

The man in "Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree" expects the world to be a great place but he cannot handle the hatred, anger, insults and jealousy of the people (ll. 16-17). He leaves. He goes to live in nature at the yew-tree but finds that he has no purpose and is "unfruitful" (ll. 29). This man seems sad in two ways. First, that he experiences and appreciates the beauty of nature that so many others don't. He can stare at the scene around him and continually admire the beauty, but the people he left do not understand it. The second way is that others "felt/ What he must never feel" (ll. 39-40). Though this statement is said to be in conjunction with "mournful joy," I think it's more sorrowful that he did not have the connect with other people (ll. 39). He could experience nature but not friendship and camaraderie.

The speaker of the poem goes on to instruct the readers that those with pride are thoughtless and little (ll 46-51). Wordsworth writes, "The man, whose eyes/ Is ever on himself, doth look on one, /The least of nature's works," where I think he is trying to say if you seclude yourself from the world and only think of your own person, you'll be missing so much of what "nature" really intended you to see (ll 51-53). There must be a balance between a person's interest in self and nature, and in others. Knowledge cannot be found in only one place, and you will be lonely if you isolate yourself from society. The man in this poem died alone, without any connections to anyone, and though he may have lived in a beautiful area, he missed out of all other forms of beauty in the world.