Pride – yet another deadly sin…
In Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree a stranger tells us of a kind of man whose soul was fed and sustained on pride. The very man who taught the tree how to bend its arms in circling shade; the same man who looks down on the world, and humanity, with mournful joy because of its loveliness. The stranger tells us a story of a man who seems to be oppressed through his own prideful life who died and left the Earth the Yew-Tree seat his only monument.
Pride stops us from seeing the real beauty of nature for we become entrenched in our own lives and forget the serenity of the world. Wordworth warns us of the power of pride and that “true knowledge leads to love”. True knowledge lies in the aesthetic values in life, in appreciating the natural world for its vast beauty and understanding nature’s intrinsic value. But when we become consumed with our own abilities sin can quickly overtake aesthetic values.
The lyrics of Pride by Syntax seem to reinforce the same message of Wordsworth “don’t hide, shine a light, give up on your pride…” If one is not careful with their pride it will shroud the fact that life is beautiful and nature is aesthetic.
This is clear and persuasive. But there seems to remain a bit of a potential conflict between aesthetic appreciation and the moral value of of love vs.pride, a conflict the poem introduces (as you interpret it) but that you sort of gloss over. Do you think that if the man had learned to appreciate the aesthetic beauty of nature he might have learned to love other people? Would this be comparable, then, to the true moral of Coleridge's "Rime?"
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