In 1850, Matthew Arnold wrote his Memorial Verses in memory of Wordsworth, who died on April 23rd. "The last poetic voice" was silent, he thought, because he was not sure that another nature-poet such as Wordsworth would reappear in the world. This piece of prophetic criticism was true and sincere. He himself was trying to recognise the immortal influence of Wordsworth's Nature and found it in the sense-beauty of Marguerite. The intellectual element of a modern poet in Arnold was too strong for him to see some mysterious grandeur of design in nature. Wordsworth was, happily, endowed with mystical insight into nature. When he was in despairing solitude, "being transformed into a cabbage" in the country, after the disillusionment of the French Revolution and the love-affair with Annette Vallon, he could again find new phases of natural beauty. Then he could recover the love of life, which began to expand from "kindred, friends, and playmates" to 'the human creature's absolute self". This is a splendid vision found in Nature, spiritual and religious. The sense-beauty which Arnold found in Nature was also his individual vision, but it could not become a moral force, because he failed to believe that Nature was ethical. He wandered about in nature like a "Scholar Gipsy" and found his destination in a romantic world, "where the Atlantic raves Outside the Western Straits." And the poet's vision is of "cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam."
