"... arguably his views on poetry were stronger.... In ['Radical Wordsworth: the Poet Who Changed the World,' Sir Jonathan Bate] cautions against popular assumptions about the poets. He writes that 'among those labelled Romantics, there were abolitionists, vegetarians, advocates for women’s rights and animal rights and what we would now call an environmental ethic.' Wordsworth, while championed as the inspiration behind the national parks movement and a believer in spiritual attachment to the environment, would balk at some of the aims of Extinction Rebellion. Bate... said that although Wordsworth may have lost the radicalism of his youth, he would also have had reservations about modern concepts, such as rewilding, which is letting nature rule unhindered by human intervention. 'He’d say that not just because, like so many of us, he went from youthful rebellion to aged conservatism but also because he believed that the conservation of the environment depends on respect for ancient traditions of stewardship, as exemplified by the hill farms of the Lake District.'"
From
"William Wordsworth ‘would have marched with Extinction Rebellion’" (The London Times).
I had to look up
"Extinction Rebellion."It's funny to take a dead person and make assertions about what side he'd be on in some current dispute. But which version of this dead one is relevant? Might as well take your pick:
“The young Wordsworth would have marched with them,” Bate said. “But the older Wordsworth would have written sonnets saying, ‘Lock them up’.”
