John Muir And I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

“The power of imagination makes us infinite.” (John Muir). Both John Muir and William Wordsworth demonstrate this through their use of language as they describe nature scenes. John Muir studies nature and in his essay about locating the Calypso Borealis he uses scientific descriptions to grab his reader’s attention and to portray his excitement at finding the rare flower. William Wordsworth on the other hand shows his appreciation for the beauty of nature and its effect on a person’s emotions in the vivid visual descriptions that he gives of the daffodils in his poem ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud.’ Wordsworth with his appreciation of beauty and Muir through scientific descriptions provide an indication of the influence that nature has had on them as they capture their reader’s attention both emotionally and visually through their personal and unique use of tone, diction, syntax and vocabulary.

Both Muir in his essay The Calypso Borealis and Wordsworth in his poem Wandered lonely as a cloud, evoke emotion

within their writings but in different ways. In his description of discovering the flower the Calypso Borealis, Muir evokes an emotional atmosphere in his writing that is both caring and loving. His love and admiration for nature is portrayed when he describes the flower being nestled on a bed of yellow moss on the bank of a stream. When Muir says, “Storms, thunderclouds, winds in the woods – were as welcomed as friends.” he demonstrates that he is not afraid of nature, but embraces all that it has to offer. Wordsworth maintains that the beauty of nature uplifts the human spirit creating a dynamic atmosphere when he says: “The waves beside them danced; but they out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, in such jocund company.”
Both John Muir’s Calypso Borealis and Wordsworth’s Wandered lonely as a cloud, are pieces of literature that give vivid and detailed perspectives on nature, creating a visual picture in the reader’s mind. Muir’s writing is formal and academic when he says, “Around the Great Lakes and wandering through innumerable Tamarac and arbor-vitae swamps and forests of maple.” Muir uses the word innumerable to show how many Tamarac trees there are, helping to create a sense of awe for boundless species of trees and plants. The reader is given a visual image of the location by being given the knowledge of which types of trees are growing there. Muir describes his surroundings by depicting the habitat that he is laboring to travel through when he lets the reader know that he is; “Struggling through tangled, drooping branches and over and under broad heaps of fallen trees.” Furthermore, he goes on to explain the difficulty of negotiating his way through this habitat when he describes that he is “Fording streams more and more difficult to cross and wading bogs and swamps that seemed more and more extensive.” His repetition of the word more facilitates a gain in pace and excitement within his writing, helping to further engage the reader. Meanwhile, in the following quote, Wordsworth uses an inverted sentence in order to make the stanza rhyme and to give his words a dancing rhythm to match their meaning. “Ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in a sprightly dance.” The tone gives an impression of being overwhelmed by the vast number of daffodils. By the use of personification the picture is brought alive and, movement is brought to the visual image.
Muir and Wordsworth show their commitment to nature by the fact that they discover flowers and relate that experience to readers via their writing, but they do this in different ways. Muir uses a descriptive essay incorporating identity markers like historical information and scientific facts around his discovery of the flower. We know that he is purposely going out to try to discover rare flowers. “The rarest and most beautiful of the flowering plants I discovered on this first grand excursion was Calypso Borealis (the Hider of the North).” The use of the word grand when describing the adventure lets the reader know that the impressive, ambitious and far-reaching pleasurable short trip was monumental to Muir. By calling the Calypso Borealis the Hider of the north the reader is given an idea of how hard it was to find the flower. Conversely, Wordsworth is out wandering around when he stumbles upon the daffodils and feels compelled to write a poem about the beauty of the experience to share this with others, his writing indicates surprise, “When all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils.”
The encounters with the flowers that Muir and Wordsworth discovered had an everlasting impact upon their lives and they remembered their experiences often and with detail.

The encounter with the flower had so impressed Muir that he wrote a letter about it to his university professor, Professor J. D. Butler. He mentions that the calypso meeting happened forty five years ago and yet he vividly remembers the meeting and is able to describe it in detail. He mentions that it was one of his most unforgettable and inspiring meetings in his life with anybody or anything. Wordsworth reminisces in the last stanza of his poem that frequently when he is lying on his couch feeling bored or sad he reflects upon the vision of the daffodils and that makes him happy again. He uses the expression “in vacant or in pensive mood” using the word vacant rather than ‘empty’, implying that he has room in his mind for thought, as opposed to having nothing in his mind at

all.
In closing, it can be noted that nature affects each and every one of us in a profound way. This is illustrated through the writings of Muir and Wordsworth where we are brought closer to nature through their descriptions and are able to imagine the scenes that they themselves encountered. Both Muir in his essay and Wordsworth in his poem relay their experiences with nature and discovering flowers using vividly descriptive words. In Muir’s premeditated encounter with nature, he is precise and loving in his descriptions, whereas Wordsworth is overwhelmed and excited upon his accidental encounter. None the less both men’s experiences stay with them a lifetime, allowing them to create works of literature that contain vivid imagery and emotional challenges of tone that stand up to the test of time and are powerful enough to engage the reader of today.