Tintern Abbey – Poem
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Often the poem is simply called “Tintern Abbey.” The abbreviated title is effective for claritys sake, but it is also misleading, as the poem does not actually take place in the abbey. Wordsworth begins his poem by telling the reader that it has been five years since he has been to this place a few miles from the abbey. He describes the “Steep and lofty cliffs,” the “wild secluded scene,” the “quiet of the sky,” the “dark sycamore” he sits under, the trees of the orchard, and the “pastoral farms” with “wreaths of smoke” billowing from their chimneys.
In the second stanza Wordsworth tells his readers that his first visit to this place gave him “sensations sweet” when he was in the “lonely rooms” of the city. He intimates that these “feelings / Of unremembered pleasure” may have helped him to be a better person, perhaps simply by putting him in a better mood than he would have been in otherwise:
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good mans life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
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,
Is lightened
Wordsworth goes on to suggest his spiritual relationship with nature, which he believes will be a part of him until he dies:
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid sleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
In the third stanza, he begins to consider what it would mean if his belief in his connection to nature were misguided, but stops short. Seeming not to care whether the connection is valid or not, he describes the many benefits that his memories nature give him. At the end of the stanza he addresses the Wye River: “How oft, in spirit, have I returned to thee / O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the woods, / How often has my spirit returned to thee!”
In the fourth stanza, Wordsworth begins by explaining the pleasure he feels at being back in the place that has given him so much joy over the years. He is also glad because he knows that this new memory will give him future happiness: “in this moment there is life and food / for future years.” He goes on to explain how differently he experienced nature five years ago, when he first came to explore the area. During his first visit he was full of energy:
like a roe
I bounded oer the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
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)
To me was all in all.–I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
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,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.
Wordsworth quickly sets his current self apart from the way he was five years ago, saying, “That time is past.” At first, however, he seems almost melancholy about the change: “And all its aching joys are now no more, / And all its dizzy raptures.” Over the past five years, he has developed a new approach to nature:
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity.
As a more sophisticated and wiser person with a better understanding of the sad disconnection of humanity, Wordsworth feels a deeper and more intelligent relationship with nature:
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused
Wordsworth is “still / A lover of the meadows and the woods,” but has lost some of his gleeful exuberance. Instead, he views nature as the “anchor of [his] purest thoughts, the nurse, / The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul / of all my moral being.”
In the fifth and last stanza, Wordsworth addresses his sister Dorothy, calling her both “Sister” and “dear Friend.” Through her eyes, Wordsworth can see the wild vitality he had when he first visited this place, and this image of himself gives him new life. It is apparent at this point in the poem that Wordsworth has been speaking to his sister throughout. Dorothy serves the same role as nature, reminding Wordsworth of what he once was:
in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasure in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister!
Wordsworth