# Wordsworth's nature as moral teacher

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH07.P021](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH07.P021/#char=812,867): "Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson."

Wordsworth gives Chesterton a concrete point of comparison in ‘The Tables Turned’, first published in *Lyrical Ballads* (1798). Its speaker directs a bookish friend outside: ‘Let Nature be your teacher’ (line 16). More pointedly, lines 21–24 claim that a woodland impulse can teach more about human moral good and evil than the sages. This is the authority Chesterton disputes: whether a natural process or encounter can supply the standard by which people ought to act. [Read the 1798 text](https://cha.artsci.tamu.edu/LyricalBallads/HTML/lb98-bp/lb98-bp_TABLES.html).

But ‘solemn mother’ is an argumentative compression. The poem's birds are blithe, its wisdom comes through health, and its truth through cheerfulness; the scene contains much of the lightness Chesterton reserves for Francis. Nor does this one poem establish Wordsworth's entire theology or identify a direct source for Chesterton. It makes the contrast intelligible while showing its limit: the real disagreement here concerns nature's moral authority more than the presence or absence of delight. The inspected text is Texas A&M's online transcription presented as the 1798 *Lyrical Ballads*, pp. 186–188, rather than an unspecified modern collected edition.

## Sources

- [William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned, Lyrical Ballads (1798), Texas A&M online transcription](https://cha.artsci.tamu.edu/LyricalBallads/HTML/lb98-bp/lb98-bp_TABLES.html), pp. 186–188; lines 13–24 and 29–32

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