Nature and Two April Mornings

As I was reading "Two April Mornings," I couldn't help but notice the key element of nature. For example, in the first stanza the morning sunrise gives the reader an image of the setting of the poem. Almost every stanza has some reference to nature which is crucial to understanding the meaning behind the poem. Matthew even refers to his daughter with ideas of nature. "And then she sang!-she would have been a very nightingale (lines 35-36)" or "A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet with points of morning dew (lines 43-44)". I found a really interesting article on JSTOR about the structure and meaning behind this poem. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2872133?seq=1


The author of this article, Anne Kostelanetz, explains that the purpose of the introduction of nature at the beginning is two fold: to describe an actual setting and to convey the narrator's idea of nature. She also shows that the traveller's joy is present in nature (the sun is bright and red) and not projected onto it. The contrast of Matthew's attitude is striking because of the suffering he has been through. When Matthew rejects the other girl in the church yard, I wonder if Wordsworth is thinking back to when he rejected/left the woman who was pregnant with his daughter. We have talked a lot about Wordsworth's guilt and the way he dealt with events in his life and I wonder if this poem also relates to that idea. Just a thought!