Wordsworth "Tintern Abbey...above The River Wye"

Lines Composed a Few Mile Above Tintern Abbey on the banks of the River Wye, July 13, 1798*

John Constable

*First published in 1798, as the concluding poem of Lyrical Ballads. Composed on July 13, 1798, while Wordsworth and his sister were returning by the valley of the Wye, in south Wales, to Bristol after a walking tour of several days. "Not a line of it was altered and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol." The poems planned for Lyrical Ballads were already in the hands of the printer in Bristol when Tintern Abbey, so different in theme and style, was added to the volume.

Group 1:

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

With a sweet inland murmur. —Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,3                                      5

Which on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

The day is come when I again repose

Here, under this dark sycamore, and view                                   10

These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,

Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,

Among the woods and copses lose themselves,

Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb

The wild green landscape. Once again I see                               15

These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines

Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms

Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke

Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,

With some uncertain notice, as might seem,                                20

Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,

Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire

The hermit sits alone.

 Group 1:

1,  What are the prominent features of this landscape in the opening lines?  pastoral?  wilderness?  farms to woods to caves?  Are we on a trajectory toward more wildness in nature?

2.  What effect does the correction “hardly hedge rows- little lines of sportive wood run wild” have on your reading of the poem?

3.  While the hermits are most likely burning wood for charcoal to sell, why would the speaker celebrate this life lived close to nature?

4.  Why is the solitude of the hermit important to the hermit's experience in nature?

5.  If familiarity with a landscape, according to Wordsworth, increases appreciation of its effects, why emphasize his return to this river landscape?

6.  What has happened to the speaker in the five years that makes moments in nature all the more vital?

7.  If William Wordsworth walked through "Tintern Abbey"-a ruin of a church in which nature is overtaking the abbey- and this landscape in the poem is a few miles above Tintern Abbey, why would the need for faith in nature as a source for spirituality be on his mind?

8.  Address the composition of the poem as dictated to his sister Dorothy and "not a line of it was altered and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol" to Wordsworth's definition of poetry as "a spontaneous overflow of feelings recollected in tranquility."

Group Two:

 Though absent long,

These forms of beauty have not been to me,

As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:                                  25

But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,

And passing even into my purer mind                                    30

With tranquil restoration:—feelings too

Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,

As may have had no trivial influence

On that best portion of a good man's life;

His little, nameless, unremembered acts                                35

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                              40

Of all this unintelligible world

Is lighten'd:—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                               45

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul:7

While with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.        

Group 2:  

1.  How is the memory of this landscape from five years ago restorative of the natural self?

2.  How are the effects of nature on the mind an antidote to the despair of life in cities? 

3.  Define the sublime mood throught the lines 39-50.    How does it feel to be “laid asleep in body and become a living soul”?

4.  What is the “life of things” that the speaker sees in nature?

    Group Three:

                                                     If this                                           50

Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft,

In darkness, and amid the many shapes

Of joyless day-light; when the fretful stir

Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,

Have hung upon the beatings of my heart,                            55

How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee

O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the woods,

How often has my spirit turned to thee!

And now, with gleams of half-extinguish'd thought,

With many recognitions dim and faint,                                 60

And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

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                               65

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 sides

Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,                             70

Wherever nature led; more like a man

Flying from something that he dreads, than one

Who sought the thing he loved.  1 For nature then

(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,

And their glad animal movements all gone by,)                     75

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                     80

An appetite: a feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm,

By thought supplied, or any interest

Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,

And all its aching joys are now no more,                               85

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 recompence. For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour                                     90

Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue.  2 And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy                               95

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

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,                          100

A motion and a spirit, that impels

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,

And mountains; and of all that we behold                            105

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,9

And what perceive;   3 well pleased to recognize

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

Of all my moral being.

1  Read The Prelude Book I for a moment of fear in wilderness and depiction of man's first stage in his relationship with nature.  (Boyhood fear of the power of nature).

2  See The Prelude Book VI and "Elegiac Stanzas" for further depiction of the the second stage in his relationship with nature.  (Consciousness of mortality and declining powers of perception)

3  See The Prelude Book XII  for further depiction of the the third stage in his relationship with nature.  (The attainment of the sublime mind)

Group 3:  

1.  Why is the present experience of the landscape around the river not limited to “present pleasure”?

2.  Describe the speaker’s youthful relationship with nature:  “like a roe..” (lines 65-)

3.  Describe the speaker’s adolescent relationship with nature:  “still sad music of humanity” (lines 87-)

4.  Describe the speaker’s matured adult relationship with nature: “a sense sublime”(lines 93-112)

5.  What does it mean to "half create and perceive" the landscape?

6.  With the recent memory of the ruined Tintern Abbey and the shift from the pastoral landscape to a wilderness landscape, how is nature now replacing the church as a moral and spiritual guide?

Group Four:

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                            115

Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,

My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch

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                            125

From joy to joy: for she can so inform

The mind that is within us, so impress

With quietness and beauty, and so feed

With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,12

Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,                      130

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all

The dreary intercourse of daily life,

Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb

Our chearful faith that all which we behold

Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon                               135

Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;

And let the misty mountain winds be free

To blow against thee: and in after years,

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

For all sweet sounds and harmonies; Oh! then,

If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,

Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts                   145

Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,

And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance,

If I should be, where I no more can hear

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

A worshipper of Nature, hither came,

Unwearied in that service: rather say

With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal                               155

Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,

That after many wanderings, many years

Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,

And this green pastoral landscape, were to me

More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake.                    160

Group Four:

1.  What does the speaker see in his sister?  in his sister’s future?

2.  Which stage of her relationship with nature (one, two, or three-- see questions in Group 3) does William believe Dorothy is currently experiencing?

3.  What can nature do for the mind according to lines 125-135?

4.  Describe the "sublime mind" in lines 143-153.  Why will this exalted mind be inured from grief, pain, solitude?

5.  Beyond Dorothy, how are the final lines addressed to you-the reader?