3.1 In the same year that Horace Benedict de Saussure passed away, an English poet, William Wordsworth, began writing a poem upon which he would work intermittently for the rest of his life.  It was highly personal and revealing, and perhaps for this reason was never published or even given a title in his lifetime.  When it was published three months after his death, its title was given by his surviving wife, Mary.  She called it “The Prelude” and it is considered the poet’s greatest work, and he one of the foremost English poets of his age.

3.2 Wordsworth wrote of the poem:

“Several years ago, when the Author retired to his native mountains with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary work that might live, it was a reasonable thing that he should take a review of his own mind, and examine how far Nature and Education had qualified him for such an employment.”

“As subsidiary to this preparation, he undertook to record, in verse, the origin and progress of his own powers, as far as he was acquainted with them.”

“That work, addressed to a dear friend, most distinguished for his knowledge and genius, and to whom the Author’s intellect is deeply indebted, has been long finished; and the result of the investigation which gave rise to it, was a determination to compose a philosophical Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society, and to be entitled the “Recluse”; as having for its principal subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement.” 

3.3 An intimate, autobiographical poem by one of the leading English poets of the nineteenth century, seems a good place to look for a description of the thoughts and feelings of the age, about Man’s relation to Nature. And the poem does not disappoint. Book VIII ‘Retrospect” describes the spiritual strength the poet draws from the beauty of Nature to bear the commotion of life in the big city. “With deep devotion, Nature, did I feel, In that enormous City’s turbulent world, Of men and things, what benefit I owed, To thee, and those domains of rural peace, Where to the sense of beauty first my heart Was opened;

3.4 Born and brought up on the fringes of the Lake District, Wordsworth came back to the area in December 1799, the year he began the Prelude and settled into a 'poetic retirement' within his 'native mountains.' Although Wordsworth did not 'discover' the Lake District, nor was he the one who popularised it the most, he "was destined to become one of the key attractions to the area, while his particular vision of his native landscape would have an enduring influence upon its future." Not just a 'nature poet', his poetry "is about the organic relationship between human beings and the natural world...' His 'vision' of nature was one that did not distort it in order to make art – its beauty was inherent and needed no artificial adornment. In 1835 he published “A guide through the district of the lakes in the north of England with a description of the scenery, &c. for the use of tourists and residents”. Here he wrote famously, that the Lake District is a "sort of national property in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy". In doing so, he was the first to create the vision which was to lead to the establishment of scores of National Parks across the world with millions of visitors each year.

3.5 Book VI of the Prelude is titled “Cambridge and the Alps” and describes his version of the Grand Tour, not least his first view of Mont Blanc and crossing of the Alps. Perversely Wordsworth claims for himself the distinction of being one person not inspired by that magnificent sight and experience, because it replaces a romantic figment of his imagination with reality. “That very day, From a bare ridge we also first beheld Unveiled the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved To have a soulless image on the eye That had usurped upon a living thought That never more could be.” Nevertheless the sight of the ‘wondrous Vale of Chamony’ soon reconciled him to reality. The Beauty of Nature is everywhere in his poetry, and Lakes and Mountains are its quintessence.

3.6 The lake appears again in one of his best-known poems, the theme being a new one – the recollection in tranquillity of the beauty of Nature – being a source of spiritual renewal:

“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”

3.7 The ‘dear friend’ to whom the Prelude was addressed was Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere was his longest major poem published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Along with other poems in Lyrical Ballads, it was a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature.

3.8 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a tale told to a nervous wedding guest by a strange old man with a fearful glittering eye and skinny hand. He relates how a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.

3.9 The Ship becomes trapped in an ice flow, but an Albatross arrives and brings good fortune;

“At length did come an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God’s name.

It ate the food it ne’er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit:
The helmsman steered us through!

And a good south wind sprung up behind;
the Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner’s hollo!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.’

God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus! –
Why look’st thou so? – With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross.”

The ship is then cursed and the entire crew, four times fifty men, die horribly of thirst.

“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where
Nor any drop to drink.

And every tongue, through utter drought
Was withered at the root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.”

The mariner is saved but cursed to tell his tale to all he meets

“Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.”

And he has this parting wisdom for his, now terrified, wedding guest

“Farewell, farewell! But this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us
He made and loveth all”

3.10 This poem is well known, at least in England.  Less well known is that at the latest count 190 birds have gone extinct since 1500 and this rate of extinction seems to be increasing.

3.11 The situation is exemplified by Hawaii, where 30% of all known recently extinct bird taxa originally lived. Other areas, such as Guam, have also been hit hard; Guam has lost over 60% of its native bird taxa in the last 30 years. Island species in general, and flightless island species in particular are most at risk. The disproportionate number of rails in the list reflects the tendency of that family to lose the ability to fly when geographically isolated. Even more rails became extinct before they could be described by scientists; these taxa are listed in Late Quaternary prehistoric birds.

3.12 Currently there are approximately 10,000 species of birds, with an estimated 1,200 considered to be under threat of extinction.

3.13 One bird in particular was to go extinct within 50 years of the publication of Coleridge’s poem, the great auk.

3.14 The great auk was an important part of many Native American cultures, both as a food source and as a symbolic item. Early European explorers to the Americas used the auk as a convenient food source or as fishing bait, reducing its numbers. The bird's down was in high demand in Europe, a factor which largely eliminated the European populations by the mid-16th century. Scientists soon began to realize that the great auk was disappearing and it became the beneficiary of many early environmental laws, but this proved not to be enough. Its growing rarity increased interest from European museums and private collectors in obtaining skins and eggs of the bird. On 3 July 1844, the last two confirmed specimens were killed on Eldey, off the coast of Iceland, which also eliminated the last known breeding attempt. The great auk is mentioned in several novels and the scientific journal of the American Ornithologists' Union is named The Auk in honour of this bird.

3.15 This bird merits a whole chapter in Elizabeth’s Kolbert’s 2015 Pulitzer prize winning, The Sixth Extinction, which followed a book of the same name by Richard Leaky published in 1991. It may be that Elizabeth has a ‘glittering eye’ or Richard a ‘skinny hand’, for it would seem that the Ancient Mariner’s sentence is not yet served, and his ghastly tale will needs be told for years to come.

3.16 That the sight of lakes in a mountain setting is a source of pleasure and an inspiration for poetry is now well enough understood.  England has its own Lake District, a gentle rival in beauty to Lake Annecy, which has become over the years one of the best loved of English tourist attractions. But it was not always so.

3.17 In England as late as the mid eighteenth century, early visitors were not impressed.  "Daniel Defoe, for example found the Cumbrian landscape "eminent only for being the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England, or even Wales itself. " By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, aided by the accounts of more responsive viewers like the poet Thomas Gray, travellers were learning to love the dramatic valleys and rugged hilltops." (Ritvo 2000)

3.18 This emerging sensibility to the beauty of the lake and mountain scenery was developed to new heights by Wordsworth’s arrival in Kendall - a poet full of radical ideas to create a new style of poetry.  A poetry which used the language of ordinary people and spoke simply to their hearts.  A poetry which celebrated the beauty of the natural world. For instance of the mountains surrounding the Lake District he wrote "in the combinations which they make, towering above each other, or lifting themselves in ridges like the waves of a tumultuous sea, and in the beauty and variety of their surfaces and colours, they are surpassed by none".  Clearly, however, he had never visited Lake Annecy.

3.19 Wordsworth and  Coleridge came to be known as the Lake Poets and to be ranked amongst the greatest poets England has produced,  and "Lyrical Ballads", the collection of poems they wrote,  one of the most important collections of poems in the English language.

3.20 So when Wordsworth wrote in his  ‘Guide through the District of the Lakes’ published in 1820, that the Lake District was "A sort of national property in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy," he had more of an audience for his ideas than most.