Rediscover the Sublime

Last week marked the arrival of midterms, when papers are written daily as you agonize about tomorrow’s literature test over your fifth dose of coffee.  A correlation develops between hours not slept and espresso shots per cup.  Stresses mount as sanity slips, break coming none too soon…don’t forget to breathe.

I took a pleasant stroll through the neighborhoods around our campus on Saturday–part of my efforts to detox from midterms.  No plan, no map, simply wandering in the crisp Michigan air of fall.  The beauty and peace found there among the turning leaves and serene sky was much welcomed.  I was reminded of a poem by William Wordsworth, the eighteenth century English poet:

…I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, in the mind of man,

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

Wordsworth hails from the early Romantic movement, a nineteenth century reaction against stringent forms of rationalism.  These artists and poets sought to restore a cultural balance by emphasizing the importance of the sublime beauty found in natural world.  Applying Wordsworth’s ideas to today, returning to that classroom of silence reveals something deeply relevant and desired, reconnecting us to what’s truly important.

Yes, collegiate success necessitates gorgeous days spent inside libraries and numerous late nights awake writing papers.  It’s harsh, exhausting, disheartening at times.  Yet the test score does not determine self-worth, the paper is merely one in a lengthy procession of those to come.  One must be able to reassess when perspective is lost and realize when inner peace has been shed amidst the frantic din of studies.  Perhaps, rather than turning to the noise of popular culture when under stress, we should join Wordsworth along the river Wye.