WORDSWORTHS POETRY

William Wordsworth

Context

William Wordsworth was born on April 7 th, 1 7 70 , in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. Young
Williams parents, John and Ann, died during his boyhood. Raised amid the mountains of Cumberland
alongside the River Derwent, Wordsworth grew up in a rustic society, and spent a great deal of his time
playing outdoors, in what he would later remember as a pure communion with nature. In the
early 1 7 90 s William lived for a time in France, then in the grip of the violentRevolution; Wordsworths
philosophical sympathies lay with the revolutionaries, but his loyalties lay with England, whose monarchy
he was not prepared to see overthrown. While in France, Wordsworth had a long affair with Annette
Vallon, with whom he had a daughter, Caroline. A later journey to France to meet Caroline, now a young
girl, would inspire the great sonnet It is a beauteous evening, calm and free.
The chaos and bloodshed of the Reign of Terror in Paris drove William to philosophy books; he was
deeply troubled by the rationalism he found in the works of thinkers such as William Godwin, which
clashed with his own softer, more emotional understanding of the world. In despair, he gave up his
pursuit of moral questions. In the mid-17 9 0 s, however, Wordsworths increasing sense of anguish
forced him to formulate his own understanding of the world and of the human mind in more concrete
terms. The theory he produced, and the poetics he invented to embody it, caused a revolution in English
literature.
Developed throughout his life, Wordsworths understanding of the human mind seems simple enough
today, what with the advent of psychoanalysis and the general Freudian acceptance of the importance of
childhood in the adult psyche. But in Wordsworths time, in what Seamus Heaney has called Dr.
Johnsons supremely adult eighteenth century, it was shockingly unlike anything that had been
proposed before. Wordsworth believed (as he expressed in poems such as the Intimations of
Immortality Ode) that, upon being born, human beings move from a perfect, idealized realm into the
imperfect, un-ideal earth. As children, some memory of the former purity and glory in which they lived
remains, best perceived in the solemn and joyous relationship of the child to the beauties of nature. But
as children grow older, the memory fades, and the magic of nature dies. Still, the memory of childhood
can offer an important solace, which brings with it almost a kind of re-access to the lost purities of the
past. And the maturing mind develops the capability to understand nature in human terms, and to see in
it metaphors for human life, which compensate for the loss of the direct connection.
Freed from financial worries by a legacy left to him in 17 9 5 , Wordsworth moved with his sister Dorothy
to Racedown, and then to Alfoxden in Grasmere, where Wordsworth could be closer to his friend and
fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge began work on a book

called Lyrical Ballads, first published in 1 7 98 and reissued with Wordsworths monumental preface
in 18 0 2 .
The publication of Lyrical Ballads represents a landmark moment for English poetry; it was unlike
anything that had come before, and paved the way for everything that has come after. According to the
theory that poetry resulted from the spontaneous overflow of emotions, as Wordsworth wrote in the
preface, Wordsworth and Coleridge made it their task to write in the simple language of common people,
telling concrete stories of their lives. According to this theory, poetry originated in emotion recollected in
a state of tranquility; the poet then surrendered to the emotion, so that the tranquility dissolved, and the
emotion remained in the poem. This explicit emphasis on feeling, simplicity, and the pleasure of beauty
over rhetoric, ornament, and formality changed the course of English poetry, replacing the elaborate
classical forms of Pope and Dryden with a new Romantic sensibility. Wordsworths most important
legacy, besides his lovely, timeless poems, is his launching of the Romantic era, opening the gates for
later writers such as John Keats,Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron in England, and Emerson and
Thoreau in America.
Following the success of Lyrical Ballads and his subsequent poemThe Prelude, a massive
autobiography in verse form, Wordsworth moved to the stately house at Rydal Mount where he lived,
with Dorothy, his wife Mary, and his children, until his death in 1 8 50 . Wordsworth became the dominant
force in English poetry while still quite a young man, and he lived to be quite old; his later years were
marked by an increasing aristocratic temperament and a general alienation from the younger Romantics
whose work he had inspired. Byronthe only important poet to become more popular than Wordsworth
during Wordsworths lifetimein particular saw him as a kind of sell-out, writing in his sardonic preface
to Don Juan that the once-liberal Wordsworth had turned out a Tory at last. The last decades of
Wordsworths life, however, were spent as Poet Laureate of England, and until his death he was widely
considered the most important author in England.
Summary
The full title of this poem is Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks
of the Wye during a Tour. July1 3 , 17 9 8 . It opens with the speakers declaration that five years have
passed since he last visited this location, encountered its tranquil, rustic scenery, and heard the
murmuring waters of the river. He recites the objects he sees again, and describes their effect upon him:
the steep and lofty cliffs impress upon him thoughts of more deep seclusion; he leans against the
dark sycamore tree and looks at the cottage-grounds and the orchard trees, whose fruit is still unripe. He
sees the wreaths of smoke rising up from cottage chimneys between the trees, and imagines that they
might rise from vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, or from the cave of a hermit in the deep
forest.

The speaker then describes how his memory of these beauteous forms has worked upon him in his
absence from them: when he was alone, or in crowded towns and cities, they provided him with
sensations sweet, / Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart. The memory of the woods and cottages
offered tranquil restoration to his mind, and even affected him when he was not aware of the memory,
influencing his deeds of kindness and love. He further credits the memory of the scene with offering him
access to that mental and spiritual state in which the burden of the world is lightened, in which he
becomes a living soul with a view into the life of things. The speaker then says that his belief that the
memory of the woods has affected him so strongly may be vainbut if it is, he has still turned to the
memory often in times of fretful stir.
Even in the present moment, the memory of his past experiences in these surroundings floats over his
present view of them, and he feels bittersweet joy in reviving them. He thinks happily, too, that his
present experience will provide many happy memories for future years. The speaker acknowledges that
he is different now from how he was in those long-ago times, when, as a boy, he bounded oer the
mountains and through the streams. In those days, he says, nature made up his whole world:
waterfalls, mountains, and woods gave shape to his passions, his appetites, and his love. That time is
now past, he says, but he does not mourn it, for though he cannot resume his old relationship with
nature, he has been amply compensated by a new set of more mature gifts; for instance, he can now
look on nature, not as in the hour / Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes / The still, sad music of
humanity. And he can now sense the presence of something far more subtle, powerful, and fundamental
in the light of the setting suns, the ocean, the air itself, and even in the mind of man; this energy seems
to him a motion and a spirit that impels / All thinking thoughts.... / And rolls through all things. For that
reason, he says, he still loves nature, still loves mountains and pastures and woods, for they anchor his
purest thoughts and guard the heart and soul of his moral being.
The speaker says that even if he did not feel this way or understand these things, he would still be in
good spirits on this day, for he is in the company of his dear, dear (d) Sister, who is also his dear, dear
Friend, and in whose voice and manner he observes his former self, and beholds what I was once. He
offers a prayer to nature that he might continue to do so for a little while, knowing, as he says, that
Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her, but leads rather from joy to joy. Natures power
over the mind that seeks her out is such that it renders that mind impervious to evil tongues, rash
judgments, and the sneers of selfish men, instilling instead a cheerful faith that the world is full of
blessings. The speaker then encourages the moon to shine upon his sister, and the wind to blow against
her, and he says to her that in later years, when she is sad or fearful, the memory of this experience will
help to heal her. And if he himself is dead, she can remember the love with which he worshipped nature.
In that case, too, she will remember what the woods meant to the speaker, the way in which, after so
many years of absence, they became more dear to himboth for themselves and for the fact that she is
in them.

Form
Tintern Abbey is composed in blank verse, which is a name used to describe unrhymed lines in iambic
pentameter. Its style is therefore very fluid and natural; it reads as easily as if it were a prose piece. But
of course the poetic structure is tightly constructed; Wordsworths slight variations on the stresses of
iambic rhythms is remarkable. Lines such as Here, under this dark sycamore, and view do not quite
conform to the stress-patterns of the meter, but fit into it loosely, helping Wordsworth approximate the
sounds of natural speech without grossly breaking his meter. Occasionally, divided lines are used to
indicate a kind of paragraph break, when the poet changes subjects or shifts the focus of his discourse.
Commentary
The subject of Tintern Abbey is memoryspecifically, childhood memories of communion with natural
beauty. Both generally and specifically, this subject is hugely important in Wordsworths work,
reappearing in poems as late as the Intimations of Immortality ode. Tintern Abbey is the young
Wordsworths first great statement of his principle (great) theme: that the memory of pure communion
with nature in childhood works upon the mind even in adulthood, when access to that pure communion
has been lost, and that the maturity of mind present in adulthood offers compensation for the loss of that
communionspecifically, the ability to look on nature and hear human music; that is, to see nature
with an eye toward its relationship to human life. In his youth, the poet says, he was thoughtless in his
unity with the woods and the river; now, five years since his last viewing of the scene, he is no longer
thoughtless, but acutely aware of everything the scene has to offer him. Additionally, the presence of his
sister gives him a view of himself as he imagines himself to have been as a youth. Happily, he knows
that this current experience will provide both of them with future memories, just as his past experience
has provided him with the memories that flicker across his present sight as he travels in the woods.
Tintern Abbey is a monologue, imaginatively spoken by a single speaker to himself, referencing the
specific objects of its imaginary scene, and occasionally addressing othersonce the spirit of nature,
occasionally the speakers sister. The language of the poem is striking for its simplicity and
forthrightness; the young poet is in no way concerned with ostentation. He is instead concerned with
speaking from the heart in a plainspoken manner. The poems imagery is largely confined to the natural
world in which he moves, though there are some castings-out for metaphors ranging from the nautical
(the memory is the anchor of the poets purest thought) to the architectural (the mind is a mansion of
memory).
The poem also has a subtle strain of religious sentiment; though the actual form of the Abbey does not
appear in the poem, the idea of the abbeyof a place consecrated to the spiritsuffuses the scene, as
though the forest and the fields were themselves the speakers abbey. This idea is reinforced by the
speakers description of the power he feels in the setting sun and in the mind of man, which consciously
links the ideas of God, nature, and the human mindas they will be linked in Wordsworths poetry for

the rest of his life, from It is a beauteous evening, calm and free to the great summation of the
Immortality Ode.