Echoes Through the Lakes

Imagine this: William Wordsworth, in the early 1800s, walking the hills of England’s Lake District. He stops to watch a field of daffodils swaying in the breeze, and suddenly, the moment becomes eternal. For Wordsworth, nature is not just scenery — it is a teacher, a healer, even a kind of companion. The world outside reflects the life within.  And it’s reflective moments like these that remind us: literature is never written in isolation… it’s a conversation that stretches across centuries. Wordsworth’s vision would echo far beyond his own time.” For Wordsworth, nature is not just scenery — it is a teacher, a healer, even a companion. The world outside reflects the life within.

Now, shift forward a century. Robert Frost, in rural New England, standing at a fork in a snowy path. His tone is different. Nature is still the stage, but here it is a testing ground. The woods are ‘lovely, dark and deep,’ but they are also a reminder of choices, obligations, even mortality. 

But Frost’s world carried a sharper edge. If Wordsworth saw nature as a gentle teacher, Frost often saw it as a mirror of human struggle — full of choices, boundaries, and unanswered questions. Where Wordsworth sought transcendence, Frost leaned into ambiguity. Yet both, in their own ways, turned the soil of everyday life into poetry that still speaks to us today.

What ties these two poets together? Both reject lofty, artificial language. They wanted poetry in the voice of ordinary people — the farmer, the shepherd, the walker on a country road. Both believed that truth could be found in the quietest moments: a walk by a river, a stone wall between neighbors, a road not taken.

But here’s the tension. Wordsworth looks at nature and sees transcendence — a spiritual renewal. Frost looks at the same natural world and sees ambiguity, sometimes even danger. And yet, together, they teach us how a flower, or a snowfall, or even the silence of the woods can become a doorway to the deepest truths about human life.

Transcript

Imagine this: William Wordsworth, in the early 1800s, walking the hills of England’s Lake District. He stops to watch a field of daffodils swaying in the breeze, and suddenly, the moment becomes eternal. For Wordsworth, nature is not just scenery — it is a teacher, a healer, even a kind of companion. The world outside reflects the life within.  And it’s reflective moments like these that remind us: literature is never written in isolation… it’s a conversation that stretches across centuries. Wordsworth’s vision would echo far beyond his own time.” For Wordsworth, nature is not just scenery — it is a teacher, a healer, even a companion. The world outside reflects the life within.

Now, shift forward a century. Robert Frost, in rural New England, standing at a fork in a snowy path. His tone is different. Nature is still the stage, but here it is a testing ground. The woods are ‘lovely, dark and deep,’ but they are also a reminder of choices, obligations, even mortality. 

But Frost’s world carried a sharper edge. If Wordsworth saw nature as a gentle teacher, Frost often saw it as a mirror of human struggle — full of choices, boundaries, and unanswered questions. Where Wordsworth sought transcendence, Frost leaned into ambiguity. Yet both, in their own ways, turned the soil of everyday life into poetry that still speaks to us today.

What ties these two poets together? Both reject lofty, artificial language. They wanted poetry in the voice of ordinary people — the farmer, the shepherd, the walker on a country road. Both believed that truth could be found in the quietest moments: a walk by a river, a stone wall between neighbors, a road not taken.

But here’s the tension. Wordsworth looks at nature and sees transcendence — a spiritual renewal. Frost looks at the same natural world and sees ambiguity, sometimes even danger. And yet, together, they teach us how a flower, or a snowfall, or even the silence of the woods can become a doorway to the deepest truths about human life.

So today, let’s walk with both poets — one in England, one      in America — and listen for what they might say to each other, and to us.”*

Imagine centuries after Wordsworth, Robert Frost tramping through the snowy woods and stone-fenced fields of New England, where every fork in the road feels like a moral test. One leads to transcendence, the other leads to ambiguity. And yet both show us that the simplest moments in nature — a flower, a walk, a wall, a snowfall — can hold the deepest truths about being human. Today we’ll explore how Frost may be Wordsworth’s heir, across an ocean and a century.”

Wordsworth: believed that nature was almost a spiritual force — a teacher, a healer, a companion. He found in the lakes, hills, and rural life of England something profound about human existence.

However, nature isn’t as benevolent in Frost’s work — more ambiguous, more stark — but he also uses rural landscapes as the backdrop for human questions. The woods, stone walls, snowy evenings — they hold metaphysical weight.

Wordsworth: In his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, he declared that poetry should be written in “the real language of men” — simple speech about common life. Frost also had that impulse, but in a New England idiom. His conversational style, rural characters, and homespun rhythms often conceal great depth.

Wordsworth: Many poems focus on solitary walks or solitary memory — “I wandered lonely as a cloud…”

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.

Another equally famous poem by Robert Frost is “The Road Not Taken” -

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Whose woods these are I think I know.   
His house is in the village though;   
He will not see me stopping here   
To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   
To stop without a farmhouse near   
Between the woods and frozen lake   
The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   
To ask if there is some mistake.   
The only other sound’s the sweep   
Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   
But I have promises to keep,   
And miles to go before I sleep,   
And miles to go before I sleep

With Wordsworth, nature awakens memory and deepens emotion (“spots of time”). With Frost, memory is more pragmatic, even ironic — but still, his poems return again and again to how the past shapes the self.

So if Wordsworth is the poet of nature as spiritual renewal, Frost is the poet of nature as existential testing ground. Both walk country paths, but Wordsworth finds transcendence, and Frost finds the hard edge of reality — yet both find poetry in the ordinary.  And Wordsworth expresses that transcendence in his brief poem - my heart leaps up -

My heart leaps up when I behold 
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began; 
So is it now I am a man; 
So be it when I shall grow old, 
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Sound transition

Born in 1770 in England’s rugged Lake District, William Wordsworth grew up surrounded by hills, streams, and wide skies — the very scenery that would later define his poetry. But Wordsworth wasn’t just a solitary dreamer wandering the countryside. He was also a revolutionary in literary terms. Alongside his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he launched the Romantic movement with their groundbreaking collection Lyrical Ballads. And in his famous preface, Wordsworth argued something radical: that poetry should speak in the language of ordinary people, and that the deepest truths could be found not in kings or battles, but in shepherds, children, and quiet walks through nature. For Wordsworth, the humble and the everyday were not beneath poetry — they were poetry.”

“Now let’s cross an ocean and a century. Robert Frost was born in 1874, not in the countryside of England, but in the rougher, rockier landscapes of New England. Like Wordsworth, Frost rooted his poetry in the ordinary lives of rural people — farmers, neighbors, wanderers on back roads. And like Wordsworth, he believed that the most profound truths could emerge from the simplest encounters. But Frost’s world carried a sharper edge. If Wordsworth saw nature as a gentle teacher, Frost often saw it as a mirror of human struggle — full of choices, boundaries, and unanswered questions. Where Wordsworth sought transcendence, Frost leaned into ambiguity. Yet both, in their own ways, turned the soil of everyday life into poetry that still speaks to us today.”

“So what do we find when we place Wordsworth and Frost side by side? Two men, separated by oceans and decades, yet united by a belief that poetry belongs not in palaces or academies, but on country roads and in the rhythms of ordinary speech. Wordsworth shows us how a daffodil can open into transcendence. Frost reminds us that a fork in the road can reveal the weight of our choices.

Together, they invite us into a world where nature is never just backdrop, but an active participant in human life — sometimes gentle, sometimes stern, always profound. And perhaps that’s why their poems endure: because when we read them, we are reminded that our own walks, our own moments of solitude, our own glimpses of beauty and doubt, still carry meaning.

Wordsworth once spoke of ‘spots of time’ — those moments when memory and feeling crystallize into something lasting. Frost, in his own way, gave us the same gift: small moments that echo far beyond their simplicity. And so, whether we wander lonely as a cloud, or stop by woods on a snowy evening, we are still in conversation with these two poets, across centuries, across continents, in the shared human landscape of words.”*

In fact, many critics actually refer to Robert Frost as “Wordsworth’s heir across the Atlantic.”

“And before we close, I want to personally say something about the journey we’ve been on in this series. One of the things I’ve learned — with a little help from ChatGPT — is just how deeply writers influence one another. Literature doesn’t happen in isolation. Wordsworth’s walks through the English countryside ripple forward a century and an ocean, shaping the way Frost walked through his snowy New England woods. And when we put them side by side, we can see that each new voice in literature isn’t starting from scratch — he or she is entering a conversation that has been going on for centuries. That conversation is what keeps literature alive, and what makes these connections so exciting to explore together. Every writer, no matter how original they seem, is shaped by voices that came before — sometimes echoing them, sometimes resisting them, sometimes in reaction to them, but always in conversation. When we trace those connections, we realize that each new work is part of a much larger story: a centuries-long dialogue about what it means to be human. That’s what makes looking at these great writers so rewarding — we’re not just studying them one by one, we’re listening in on an ongoing conversation across time.”

As some of you may know, I originally intended to do a series of episodes about influential writers as as completely separate entities - almost as though each writer was working in a vacuum and was not influenced by those who came before him or her - but in doing this series, I never failed to be amazed at how writers are influenced by those who came before them. In other words, literature is never written in isolation - it's a centuries long conversation across time. And every great writer is answering and reshaping the voices that came before. But most importantly, is the fact that to read one writer deeply is to overhear an echo of many others

“And this is exactly why I keep coming back to these connections between writers. Wordsworth’s walks in the Lake District ripple forward to Frost’s snowy New England roads, and when we read them side by side, we can hear that conversation clearly.”  In other words, literature is never written in isolation… it’s a conversation that stretches across centuries.”

Just think about the works of William Wordsworth and Robert Frost. William Wordsworth, in the early 1800s, walking the hills of England’s Lake District. He stops to watch a field of daffodils swaying in the breeze, and suddenly, the moment becomes eternal.

Now, shift forward a century. Robert Frost, in rural New England, standing at a fork in a snowy path. His tone is different. Nature is still the stage, but here it is a testing ground. The woods are ‘lovely, dark and deep,’ but they are also a reminder of choices, obligations, even mortality.

What ties these poets together? They all reject lofty, artificial language. They allbelieved that truth could be found in the quietest moments: a walk by a river, a stone wall between neighbors, a road not taken.

And here’s a thought I keep coming back to: literature is never written in isolation… it’s a conversation that stretches across centuries.”*

Now I'm going to take a literary leap from Wordsworth to a popular modern singer by the name of Taylor Swift. Obviously I can't use any copyright material to illustrate Taylor Swift's fascination with Wordsworth, but Taylor Swift has definitely expressed admiration for William Wordsworth and the Lake District, particularly through her song "The Lakes" from her 2020 album Folklore. In the song, she references the Romantic poets, including Wordsworth, and alludes to the Lake District as a place of retreat and reflection. Swift has mentioned visiting Wordsworth's grave and has spoken about the influence of the Lake Poets on her work, noting their embrace of nature and introspection. 

While Swift hasn't publicly stated a specific favorite poem by Wordsworth, "The Lakes" itself serves as a tribute to the themes and aesthetics of Wordsworth's poetry. The song captures the essence of Romanticism, with its focus on nature, solitude, and artistic retreat, mirroring the sentiments found in Wordsworth's works.  For example, in poems such as Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth finds nature a place to reflect, heal, and connect with something larger than himself.
In The Lakes, Taylor Swift imagines retreating from the pressures of fame to a quiet, natural place — a modern echo of the Romantic ideal of nature as refuge.

No, literature is never written in isolation… it’s a conversation that stretches across centuries. Wordsworth’s walks in the Lake District ripple forward to Frost’s snowy New England roads, and when we read them side by side, we can hear that conversation clearly.”

Many of Wordsworth’s poems celebrate solitary walks or quiet observation of the world, emphasizing how reflection deepens understanding. Much of Taylor Swift's music seems to portray solitude as empowering, a chance to step back and engage with inner thoughts — the contemporary equivalent of Wordsworth’s “spots of time.”

Both find artistic inspiration in the landscape - with Wordsworth, nature
sparks poetry, memory, and imagination. With Swift, nature fuels creativity and escape, inspiring the emotional and reflective tone of much of music. Both artists desire to retreat into natural landscapes — the Lake District for Wordsworth, a quiet lakeside escape for Swift — as a place to reflect, heal, and find inspiration. It’s a reminder that the desire to connect with nature and creativity, to find solitude in the midst of a chaotic world, is timeless.”

Just as Taylor Swift imagines retreating from the pressures of fame to a quiet, natural place in The Lakes, William Wordsworth finds nature a place to reflect, heal, and connect with something larger than himself in such poems as Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,

I would like to end this podcast episode with the first portion of William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey, followed by the first portion of Robert Frost’s After Apple Picking Time from 1915.

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!

And now, from Robert Frost’s After Apple picking time

MY long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
    Toward heaven still,
    And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
    Beside it, and there may be two or three
    Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
    But I am done with apple-picking now.
    Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
    The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
    I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
    I got from looking through a pane of glass
    I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
    And held against the world of hoary grass.
    It melted, and I let it fall and break.
    But I was well
    Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
    And I could tell
    What form my dreaming was about to take.
    Magnified apples appear and disappear,
    Stem end and blossom end,
    And every fleck of russet showing clear.
    My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
    It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
    I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
    And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
    The rumbling sound
    Of load on load of apples coming in.
    For I have had too much
    Of apple-picking: I am overtired
    Of the great harvest I myself desired.

Join celebrate creativity for episode 464, and a look at Charles Dickens and his extremely influential works.

Thank you for listening to celebrate creativity.