In the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth refers to poetry as ‘an acknowledgment of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgment the more sincere because it is not formal, but indirect; it is a task light and easy to him who looks at the world in the spirit of love’ (LB, p. 752). Such a statement fraught with ambiguity typifies Wordsworth's treatment of love. But he is quite sure of himself here, quite confident in these seemingly enigmatic claims. His ‘acknowledgement of the beauty of the universe’ is ‘sincere’ because it is ‘indirect’—it is filtered through love. This filter acts as an epistemology, as a way of knowing and understanding the world. Through the ‘spirit of love’, Wordsworth can create poetry that in turn reproduces the beauty of the universe for the reader. He presents ‘personal and individual’ knowledge and pleasure that by ‘habitual and direct sympathy connect … us with our fellowbeings’ (p. 752). The poet ‘is the rock of defence of human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying every where with him relationship and love’ (p. 753). Love, that is, almost always coincides with beauty, pleasure, and unity, both in the world and in poetry.

Scholars have established nature, imagination, and ideology as the central concepts for Wordsworth studies, but love is just as important to Wordsworth’s poetry and poetics. In The Prelude, Wordsworth writes that his two central ‘theme[s]’ are ‘Imagination’ and ‘intellectual love’ (TBP, 13.185–6), and he subtitles the eighth book ‘Love of Nature leading to love of Mankind’.2 This subtitle is a kind of poetic manifesto, a thesis of Wordsworth's autobiography: the argument that his first experiences of intersubjectivity were with the natural world and from those he developed a ‘love of mankind’. That phrase, in the early nineteenth century, carries revolutionary connotations reminiscent of both the American and the French declarations of the ‘rights of man’. It is a political statement that confirms the ‘natural’ rights associated with democracy, liberty, and equality, made even more radical by love of all sentient beings, and, for Wordsworth, all inanimate things as well. Moreover, Wordsworth suggests that affection for the natural world necessitates a similar relationship with people. Love of nature therefore presents an ethical imperative for both animate and inanimate life.