“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern

Abbey” Introduction
o “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye
during a Tour. July 13, 1798”— commonly known as “Tintern Abbey”— is a poem written by
the British Romantic poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth had first visited the Wye Valley
when he was 23 years old. His return five years later occasioned this poem, which
Wordsworth saw as articulating his beliefs about nature, creativity, and the human soul.
“Tintern Abbey” was included as the final poem in Lyrical Ballads, a 1798 collection of poems
by Wordsworth and his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

 “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern

Abbey” Summary
o The speaker says it has been five years since he last visited this setting. That's five summers
and five winters, which felt especially long. Now that he's back, he once again can enjoy the
gentle sound of rivers and streams running down from the mountains. He again gets to
marvel at the high and impressive cliffs. The sight of these cliffs within this remote,
untouched setting puts him in a thoughtful, reflective mood. The cliffs visually link this quiet
landscape to the calm silence of the sky. The speaker comments on how, as in his last visit,
he can sit underneath a shady sycamore tree and from there look down at the surrounding
farmland in the valley, including at the gardens surrounding cottages and at the many clumps
of trees within orchards. He notes that because of the time of year (mid-summer), the fruit on
the trees is not yet ripe and the orchards are completely green, blending in with the
surrounding trees. The lines of bushes that he can see are, from his vantage point, tiny and
almost indistinguishable as deliberately planted rows, and the picturesque, rural farms also
look almost completely green. In between the trees he sees circles of smoke drifting up
silently, as though delivering some unknown message. He imagines that this smoke could be
coming from wandering people living in the woods, or from the fire of a devoutly religious
person living alone in a cave.

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.
Critical Appreciation - Tintern
Abbey Revisited - William
Wordsworth
General Introduction
Tintern Abbey is a famous poem written by the famous Romantic poet, William
Wordsworth. The poem is based partly on Wordsworth's personal experiences as well
as his new policy of making poetry capable to be read by laymen. The poem features
Wordsworth's visit to Tintern Abbey with his sister when he was twenty-three years
old in 1793 (after his escape from the revolutionized France). He also visited the very
place after five years. He included this poem as a final poem in Lyrical Ballads. The
complete title of this poem is: "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on
Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798".

Development of Situation
The poem begins when the poet uses his cells of memory to recall his visit to Tintern
Abbey. The speaker can recollect almost everything from his early visit.
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

The speaker asserts that it was the memory of this beautious place that kept him
sane in "the din/ Of towns and cities". He thinks that he will change from a child to a
man of maturity. He has learnt to see nature from a larger perspective. In the past,
he could only enjoy Nature. Now he has the ability to understand its deep meaning.
We also find Wordsworth's sister along with him in his journey. The poet suggests
that although his sister sees Nature the way he used to in his childhood, yet she shall
be able to get a clear idea of the connections between different elements of Nature
with each other.
Themes
This large poem carries different themes each relating to the power of Nature. The
first theme of this poem is the restoring power of Nature. According to the speaker,
Nature is a healer. It heals the wounds of weariness caused by the hustle and bustle
of city life. The poet uses many negative phrases to describe city life like "din",
"evil", "lonely" and "dreary". It is the beauty of Nature that keeps the spirit of the
poet alive and restores his status as a man of instinct rather than the man of
pursuit.
It is worth noting that Romantics were in search of discovering the awe-inspiring
powers of Nature and this poem tries to do exactly that. The power that unites Man
with his Natural World seems truly in works when the poet is overwhelmed by his
second visit of the Tintern Abbey.
The third prominent theme of this poem is the connection between Nature and
imagination. Romantic Poets were linking and painting Nature through their
imagination. They believed that humans only saw a half of Nature while their minds
filled and added the rest of the beauty to the particular scene of Nature through
imagination. The poem also favours the idea of "half creation" through the human
"eyes and ears". But our mind consistently works back and forth to fill in the blank of
beauty.
Although Nature plays a dominant part in explaining the themes of the poem.
However, time and growth are two other important themes of the poem as well. The
poet suggests that as a person grows up with the passage of time, he gets a better
understanding of life but at the cost of a loss. The poet visits his cherished place
after a period of five years and he notices a change. For instance, he has lost the
energy of his youth but he has been blessed with ample understanding to unleash
different layers of the awe-inspiring Nature.
Symbols and Allusions (Figurative Analysis)
Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey boasts some serious work of symbols that
extends the meaning of the poem. The first symbol we encounter is Hermit. Hermits
are the religious people who live in isolation to devote their lives for their religion.
Here, a Hermit might be used as a symbol of spiritual quest in the peaceful lap of
nature.
The poet also uses a metaphor when performing a comparison of his sister's mind
with a mansion. But this can be taken as a symbol of wealth as well.
The (assumed) title of the poem is a direct allusion to Tintern Abbey. An abbey is a
sacred place in Christianity in which nuns or monks live. Tintern Abbey was built in
the 12th century by Walter de Clare. In the 16th century, the place had acquired a
symbolic significance of English history when it was abandoned by Henry VIII.
Setting and Imagery
The setting of this poem is quite evident from its title that is (the ruins of) Tintern
Abbey situated on the River Wye. The poem abounds in images. Some notable
images of this poem may include, "waters rolling from their mountain-springs",
"landscape with the quiet of the sky", "like a roe", and "steep woods and lofty cliffs".
Structural Analysis
Tintern Abbey is composed of 161 lines. The poem is divided into five stanzas of
different lengths. For instance, the shortest stanza contains 9 lines while the longest
contains 53. There is no proper rhyme scheme or rhythmic pattern. The poem is a
blank verse. The poem contains the elements of monologue and ode but the exact
kind is difficult to set.
Conclusion
Conclusively speaking, Tintern Abbey Revisited is a forceful romantic poem that
highlights the healing effect of Nature upon a person's heart as well as the process
of gradual learning associated with it.