William Wordsworth - Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

William Wordsworth wrote Tintern Abbey after his second visit, five years after his first, to Tintern Abbey, as said: " Five years have passed; five summers, with the length of five long winters!". By this quote you can tell he missed the visits and enjoyed his time there. But to say he enjoys nature will grossly under appreciate the vastness of emphasis that Wordsworth puts on nature, as keeping himself both spiritually and mentally sound. This soundness can be seen by the lines (25-33):

"Though absent long,
these forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
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
With tranquil restoration:"

This quote shows us a metaphor, even when he is absent and away from nature he uses the images as "a landscape to a blind man's eye" to keep himself sane and to counter the weariness of a city life. Another metaphor used later in the poem is "My former pleasures in the shootings lights of thy wild eyes. (117)" Describing is "Dear friend," who we know to be his sister (Dorothy Wordsworth), looking in amazement at the scenery, her eyes are not actually shooting light, but rather a metaphor to describe her intense gaze upon something she holds incredibly dear.

Talking again about how nature gives him something beyond what an ordinary city can give is this quote "And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with joy of elated thoughts, a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused," As he has this sublime feeling about nature, we need to ask the question of how does nature affect someone. When you first look at it, a person experiences nature and sees the vastness and huge phenomenon that is seemingly more important than any individual person and will outlive them as well! Asking this question would give most people a sense of ease, and bring people back to earth, so to speak. But I see this as a question of fate and faith. Why am I so insignificant and no way do I have the possibility of ever being or considered to be of great importance, as compared to nature. But that is the ego of man talking and in the paradoxical catch-22 of life, nature will scare us and leave us feeling insignificant but then when you are away from it you can go back to that place, that sublime image in your head, and all the frustration of life will go away, because of nature.

After reading this poem I have realized why so many people keep pictures of the Grand Canyon, or Alaska, or some huge natural wonder at their desk or in their car. It is because that is their sublime "happy" place that Wordsworth is talking about. Wordsworth believed this to be true and even directly says this about the sublimity of nature in his quote from the poem, "that blessed mood, In which the burden of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight/Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened." The feeling he has of the heavy, weary, and unintelligible world is lifted and lightened. The thing that strikes me as odd about this quote is the mystery and unintelligible description of the world. And that something as unexplainable as nature, especially for the time, could send someone to a more calming place.

So, the first theme mentioned above was the Sublime nature of.. well nature. The second theme seems to be a Spiritual and more so the passage of time and life and death. In the quote, “almost suspended, we are laid asleep in body, and become a living soul” (Lines 46-47) This passage draws to mind the christian idea of heaven and our soul leaving our body to go there. This is added by the poems reference to the "hermit sitting alone" (line 22) as a hermit is a religous recluse, the poem has religious undertones. The attention Wordsworth puts on time, like in the quote, "These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs " (Line 3), the water rolling is like the passage of time and it has been five years since his last visit to the Abbey. I wonder if saw that it had not changed at all, untouched by man-made "progress." But how much had he changed? Did he feel older and in turn feel the inevitable truth of human existence, that we are all going to die and this place, The Abbey, will still be here.

The old proverb, "The grass is greener on the other side" comes to my mind when I read this poem, because I find myself let down by a vacation away from home, when I go somewhere I have been before; Like going to the beach at St. Augustine; but yet when I think about it a year later or even months later, I find that time to be not just comparable to the previous vacation, but somewhere I would much rather be than my current situation (which right now is at my computer catching up on blogs). At the time I do not consider the situation to be sublime and life-changing but as it is Wordsworth's second time in Tintern Abbey, he will pay attention to his experiences a little more closely than the last, which in turn led him to write this poem.

I liked this poem a lot and could relate to it very well, sitting on my computer just past midnight, having to go to work at 6 AM, I have the questions in my head, "Will I wake up early enough to not be late?" "Will I have enough time to finish all 20 of my blogs by next week?" then deeper and farther in the future thoughts pop into my head, "What will I do after this class ends, after college.. what then?" And I know I can always look to my vacation in St. Augustine and watching the waves crash over the rocks, and all the questions do not seem to require any stress, in the grand scheme of things.