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?