What is Pantheism?

Pantheism is the belief that God is present in all natural things. It is a doctrine that the whole universe is a manifestation of God.

A pantheist believes that God is present in all natural things, and that His existence can be identified from the nature of His creation, the universe.

Pantheism regards God as wholly immanent in the world and tends to identify Him with it. According to this theory, God is not a transcendental : but an immanent Being in the Spatio-temporal world. In poetry pantheism presents a belief that all is divine.

Pantheism is the belief that everything is God, and God is everything. The universe, "Nature', and God are thus interchangeable terms. The Romantics, who glorify nature, frequently exhibit pantheistic views. It is important to consider the marked change from the Neoclassic "Great Chain of Being" idea, where all forms of existence fall into an organized  hierarchy. 

Here, wind is as divine as man, and as God. In ‘Tintern Abbey' Wordsworth's pantheistic views come forth in lines 93-99: And J have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfuses , Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky. and in the mind of man. In this passage Wordsworth discusses the third phase of man's response to Nature (as Prof. Batten outlined in lecture) where man sees God. in Nature, and ultimately everywhere. God, or the 'presence', is described as dwelling in the sun, the ocean, the sky, the air, and in man. The repitition of 'and' emphasis es the multiplicity of the divine dwelling-place. Second Generation Romantics display the pantheism theme in their poems as well. In Shelley's ‘Ode to the West Wind' and 'Mount Blanc’, he uses the wind and the mountain and carve, respectively, to explore pantheistic ideas. 

Shelley describes 'the everlasting universe of things' in the first line of ‘Mount Blanc’. This phrase sums up Nature, God, and man's thoughts into one ‘everlasting universe.' Shelley uses the river to represent the ‘flowing’ nature of divinity in this poem, and uses, the wind for the same purpose in ‘Ode to the West Wind'. The wind, a manifestation of the divine, affects all things from the leaves to the sea, also affects Shelley. 

In line 52, Shelley actually refers to praying to the wind, which again reaffirms the pantheistic idea that God is everywhere, and everything deserves, in essence, a prayer’. Remember, it's easy to find examples of . pantheism in Romantic poetry. Since the Romantics stress the ‘one with Nature' theme so frequently, this theme is. often extended to include the divine with Nature, and thus man with the divine.