The Troubadour Podcast Sunday Morning Poetry #5: Nutting by William Wordsworth.
For those familiar with Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, imagine for a moment what Roark's childhood might have been like. He talked a great deal about his love of the material world and, equally, his love of his own ability to transform that material as he saw fit.
I believe some of Wordsworth's poetry, particularly Nutting, illustrates a similar view.
In this simple poem, a young boy enters an unvisited nook in the woods. After appreciating and reveling in his own power, he suddenly and maniacally tears, rips and sullies the hazel nut bower.
In this discussion, I explain the importance of this poem, how it is emblematic of Romanticism and, most importantly, how the essential interest of Wordsworth was the development of consciousness--our faculty of awareness.