Worship of Nature
The Worship of Nature John Greenleaf Whittier, famous poet in the ninetieth century, has shown throughout the poem, The Worship of Nature, a splendid explanation of how the natural world relates to us in both a physical and a spiritual sense. A spiritual sense that the word “Worship” deals with the ideal belief that there is or was something in which created all things. Also, society and order can be compared to nature in such a way that nature is everything that is, was, or will be created. Within the rhyme scheme of the Shakespearian sonnet, John Greenleaf Whittier has focused this poem under the theme of Creator and his Creation. Beginning his first stanza with: “HE harp at Nature’s advent strung” (Nature line 1), Whittier emphasizes “HE” in which it represents God harp or sculpting “Nature.” In this sense, Nature represents God’s creations. As you progress farther through the poem some common elements of nature for example: life, death, water, earth, fire, and air. “The ocean looketh up to the heaven, / And mirrors every star” (Nature line 7-8). These lines implies that mimicking others is a waist because it impossible for a copy which mirrors another to become the original. Combining God’s creations and mimicking others, John Greenleaf Whittier sets a tone of holy and sanctifying. John Greenleaf Whittier uses the Shakespearian sonnet to his advantage by staging the first two lines into a cause and the latter into an effect. It may be easiest to relate this theory to the last stanza. Music is a reoccurring component of this poem that refers back to the first stanza about God being the creator playing a harp making a beautiful symphony for all of his creations. Whittier has a very strange order in his poem but it makes sense at the end when he relay all together by implying that everything takes it own course and continues to move forward since the beginning of time which is eternity when talking about God. To put it briefly, John Greenleaf Whittier