Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Five years have past; five summers, with the length 11
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again 4
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky. 8
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, 12
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
‘Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, 16
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit’s cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone. 22
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me 24
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, 28
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence 32
On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift, 36
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world, 40
Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood 44
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 48
We see into the life of things. 49
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft— 50
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stair 52
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, 53
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart—
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro’ the woods, 56
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, 58
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity, 60
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food 64
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides68
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man 70
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days
And their glad animal movements all gone by) 74
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract 76
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love, 80
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more, 84
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned88
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 90
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 92
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 94
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused, 96
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air, 98
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels 100
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods 104
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world 106
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 110
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 111
Of all my moral being.
Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch 117
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while 120
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform 126
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed 128
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 130
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life, 132
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; 136
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years, 138
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind 140
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place 142
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, 144
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, 146
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance— 147
If I should be where I no more can hear 148
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence—wilt thou then forget 150
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long 152
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say 154
With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, 158
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me 159
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake! 160
— William Wordsworth.
The “Lines Written (or Composed) a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798, ” is well-known simply as ” Tintern Abbey”, although that building does not appear within the poem. It was written by Wordsworth after a walking tour with his sister in this section of the Welsh Borders. The description of his encounters with the countryside on the banks of the River Wye grows into an outline of his general philosophy. There has been considerable debate about why evidence of the human presence in the landscape has been downplayed and in what way the poem fits within the 18th-century loco-descriptive genre.
He had previously visited the area as a troubled twenty-three-year-old in August 1793. Since then he had matured and his seminal poetical relationship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge had begun. Wordsworth claimed to have composed the poem entirely in his head, beginning it upon leaving Tintern and not jotting down so much as a line until he reached Bristol, by which time it had just reached mental completion. He had it inserted at the eleventh hour as the concluding poem of “Lyrical Ballads” being jointly published by Wordsworth and his friend Samuel T Coleridge . The poem represents the climax of Wordsworth’s first great period of creative output and prefigures much of the distinctively Wordsworthian verse that was to follow. ( Arthur Beatty, William Wordsworth, his doctrine and art in their historical relations, University of Wisconsin Studies #17, 1922, p.64 ) : :
The Poem comprises verse paragraphs rather than stanzas. It contains some elements of the ode and of the dramatic monologue. . In the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth noted: “I have not ventured to call this Poem an Ode but it was written with a hope that in the transitions, and the impassioned music of the versification, would be found the principle requisites of that species of composition.” : : The apostrophe at its beginning is reminiscent of the 18th century landscape-poem, but it is now agreed that the best designation of the work would be the conversation poem, The silent listener in this case is Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy, who is addressed in the poem’s final section. Transcending the nature poetry written before that date, it employs a much more intellectual and philosophical engagement with the subject that verges on pantheism. ( God is the Universe which is manifestation of God; that’s Pantheism; it admits and tolerates all Gods. ) : : The poem’s tripartite division develop the significance of his experience of the landscape, and a final confirmatory address to the implied listener. : : : :
Lines 1–49
Revisiting the natural beauty of the Wye after five years fills the poet with a sense of “tranquil restoration”. He recognises in the landscape something which had been so internalised as to become the basis for out of the body experience.
Lines 49–111
In “thoughtless youth” the poet had rushed enthusiastically about the landscape and it is only now that he realises the power such scenery has continued to have upon him, even when not physically present there. He identifies in it “a sense sublime/ Of something far more deeply interfused,/ Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns” (lines 95–97) and the immanence of “A motion and a spirit, that impels/ All thinking things, all objects of all thought,/ And rolls through all things” (lines 100–103). With this insight he finds in nature “The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,/ The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/ Of all my moral being” (lines 108–111).
Lines 111–159
The third movement of the poem is addressed to his sister Dorothy, “my dearest Friend,/ My dear, dear Friend,” as a sharer in this vision and in the conviction that “all which we behold is full of blessings”. It is this that will continue to create a lasting bond between them.
Having internalised the landscape, Wordsworth claimed now “to see into the life of things” (line 50) and, so enabled, to hear “oftentimes/ The still sad music of humanity” (92-3) : : The heavy industrial activity in the area ; “wreaths of smoke”; presence of the local ironworks, or of charcoal burning, or of a paper works ; were suppressed by Wordsworth. However , the lines “the still sad music of humanity” presented industrial manifestation, It seems to mean that he can sense some universal, timeless connection between nature and all of humanity. : : : :
( The Above informations are as provided in Wikipedia’s Article. ) : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :: Now , let me attempt HERE In BELOW present the conversation of the Poet / The Speaker , line by line. : : : :
The speaker says it has been five years since he last visited Tintern Abbey. That’s five summers and five winters, which felt doubly long : ( connected together of 10 months ) : Now that he’s revisiting his place , he once again is happily hearing the “murmur” : soft sound of rivers and streams rolling from the mountains. He again lays eyes on high face of rocks : “steep” ( vertical ) and “lofty” ( prominant ) “cliffs” from where upon he can overlook the places ( of the town ) : ” On a wild secluded scene ” , that is , On getting a privy spot of scene which is untamed ( wild ) and hidden from others , his privacy puts him more interiorized to the “deep thoughts” and ideas that “impress” firmly “and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.”: : Thus the sight of these cliffs imprint thoughtful , contemplative and reflective persona of The Poet / The Speaker who starts linking of this landscape with the calm silence of the sky. : : The day is come when he again takes rest under the dark shadow of “sycamore” tree , and “view the plots of cottage-ground, the orchard-tufts” : that is growing grass in the fruity gardens. The Orchard trees “at this season, with their unripe fruits , Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves’Mid groves and copses.” : Meaning , the fruits are clothed in the covering / or encased with one green coloured outer cover. “Mid grows” & “corpses” suggest the Orchard of small trees & dense growth of bushes. : : He notes “hedge rows”( row of fence of bushes and shrubs ) , ” little lines Of sportive wood run wild” and “Green to the door” : “pastoral farms”relating to Shepherd’s/ herdsmen for raising sheeps & cattles ; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees that deliver some unknown message. He imagines that this smoke could be coming from “vagrant dwellers” wandering people living in the woods, or “from the fire of a Hermit’s cave” devoutly religious person living alone in a cave. : : ( Lines 1 To 22 ) : :
Even while the speaker was away from this beautiful landscape, he didn’t forget it and could still picture it vividly. While surrounded by the noisiness and loneliness of urban settings, remembering the beauty of this place helped the speaker through difficult and tiring times, bringing him pleasant feelings within his body and mind. These memories helped him feel calm and restored, and even affected his actions, pushing him toward small, daily acts of goodness and care for other people. The speaker further thanks these memories for granting him an even more immense and awe-inspiring the gift: that wonderful, precious mood in which he felt free from the burdens of the unknown, and in which the heaviness of dealing with this often confusing, senseless world was lessened. In that calm, precious state of mind, the speaker could in a sense transcend the restrictions of his physical body, which would become totally still as the speaker became only his soul. In this state, he says, his vision became silent, calm, powerful, and with a feeling of equanimity and happiness he had insight into life itself.
The speaker goes on to offer the possibility that he simply imagined this experience, because it is something that he just wants to believe. He then rejects this possibility, however, commenting on how so many times, when unhappiness and the rush and stress of daily life have weighed heavily upon his heart, he has remembered this beautiful, landscape. Addressing the landscape directly, he says that within his mind or soul he has gone back to the woodlands of the Wye Valley for solace and comfort.
The speaker’s memories are like shining lights that have been half snuffed out, becoming darker or hard to see. There is a kind of sadness or confusion in the speaker’s thoughts as the landscape, so often remembered as a picture in his mind, is now seen again in real life. At the same time, being in this landscape gives him the sense that in addition to the happiness he’s experiencing right now, he will also have happiness in the future from remembering this current visit. He hopes that this is true, even though he is different from how he was when he was younger and first came here. His younger self was like a deer, jumping through the hills and alongside deep rivers and isolated streams alike, following nature. His younger self was someone running away from something that he feared, rather than running toward something he cared for. Even so, back then nature was everything to him, since he had already lost some of the less sophisticated happiness of his childhood. He can’t express or showing the reader exactly how he used to be, though. As a younger man, the sound of a waterfall stuck with him, like a passion sticks with someone (perhaps painfully or frighteningly). Similarly, his younger self experienced the shapes and colors of the rock cliffs, the mountain, and the shade and darkness of the forest with a kind of hunger. The landscape filled the younger speaker with intense emotion and love, yet this experience was missing a deeper spiritual or intellectual aspect beyond what could physically be seen. The past is over, though, as are the emotional highs and lows of youth that were intense to the point of being painful or disorienting. The speaker isn’t weakened by this loss and doesn’t grieve it, however, because he has gained so much in exchange. Specifically, over time he has gained the ability to really see nature, not thoughtlessly as he did when he was younger, but with a full awareness of all the sadness and harmony that comes with being a human being. This awareness—this human music—is not jarring or unpleasant. Instead, it has a calming, maturing effect, helping the speaker grow out of his youthful intensity and naivety. Over time, the speaker has also come to experience a kind of force that is at once joyful and disturbing in the way that it broadens the scope of his thoughts. This force creates a profound, nearly overwhelming awareness of the way that everything is connected and part of a whole. This force, this sense of connection and unity, is present throughout the natural world and universe. It exists in the light of suns as they set, in the round ocean, the air, the blue sky, and in the human mind. This presence or force is a kind of power or living soul that makes all things possible, including the capacity for thought and everything that is thought about. This force is described as moving through everything in the universe with a motion similar to rolling waves. Because of all of this insight that he has gained, the speaker says, he loves the natural world, including the fields, forests, and mountains, and the equally powerful world of the human mind and human senses of sight and hearing, which, he says, work by half inventing and half observing the world. The speaker sees in nature and in the human senses what is most fundamental to his thinking and his best thoughts. He compares nature to a person or spiritual presence who nurtures, leads, and protects every part of him, including his heart, soul, and morality.
The speaker says that even if, by some chance, he hadn’t learned all of this, he still would not allow himself to lose his positive outlook. Addressing his sister, the speaker says that this is because she is there with him in this landscape. Calling her his closest friend, the speaker says that he sees and hears in her his former self, including the way he used to feel and understand things, and the pleasure and joy he used to experience. Celebrating this, the speaker expresses the hope that he will see his younger self in her longer so that she can experience this youthful happiness longer. He then offers a prayer for his sister’s future. He compares nature to a woman who is faithful, and who cares most for leading people through life joyfully. The speaker says that nature can shape human minds so well, make such a strong impression of beauty and calm, and nurture such a higher level of thinking, that through these gifts people can withstand all the difficulties and immorality of daily life, including cruel words, unfair or quick judgments, condescension, selfishness, and empty or fake interactions. In fact, he says, with the gifts of nature people can withstand everything that is wearing or difficult in day-to-day existence. In doing so, they can uphold a positive outlook and belief in the goodness and blessedness of life. The speaker prays that nature will always stay with and help his sister; he hopes that when she is alone, she will experience moonlight, and that she will feel the presence of the soft or slightly rainy wind from the mountains. He goes on to imagine her when she is older, and her current youthful happiness has been moderated into a more muted or quiet outlook. Then, her mind will be like a spacious, lofty house for everything that is beautiful, and everything that is melodious and harmonious will live in only in her memories. He hopes that if, at that point, she experiences pain, or loneliness, or fear, she will joyfully remember him addressing her now, and that this memory will be healing. The speaker then goes on to imagine that at this future point he might have died and can no longer see or hear his sister. He says that even if this is the case, his sister will remember that they were together in this landscape. She won’t forget, he says, that like a religious person he worshipped nature, and that he came to this setting out of this devotion. He describes his feeling for this place as not just ordinary love but as the stronger kind of devotional and sacred love. He says, finally, that his sister will remember, even after the passage of many years and traveling elsewhere, that this forest, these cliffs, and this whole living natural place were beloved to him, on their own terms but also because of what they will mean to her.
“Tintern Abbey, Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798”— A July Poem By William Wordsworth Information Appreciation and poem Analysis Presented by V Jayaraj Pune India March 16 , 2023 : : : :
MADHU MALTI 