Tintern Abbey summary and analysis

William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey (1798)

One of the most celebrated and discussed poem 'Tintern Abbey', was composed a few mile above Tintern Abbey by a prominent romantic poet William Wordsworth, is a meditative poem in measured blank verse which deals with inner life of the poet. The poem was written on revisiting (a walking tour) of the Wye valley with his sister Dorothy during 10-13 July 1798. The poet had visited the spot during the period of his mental turmoil, five years earlier, in 1793. 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. July 13, 1798.” It is a loco-descriptive or prospect poem that discusses and praises the landscapes of the very spot.

The poet doesn't only get occupied in the sublime of nature in the poem but also integrates other social and cultural aspects as well. Hence, the poem is the collaboration of nature and Wordsworth's contemporary British society of late 18^th century. But for more recent historically minded critics it has become the site of a fierce controversy between those who regard it as an exemplary poem about the relationship between the mind and the nature. It can be concluded as a deliberate attempt to evade the social and political realities of the time. To understand the poem and the controversies surroundings it we need to something of its composition. By 1798 Wordsworth (then 26) was living with his sister Dorothy in Somerset, with Coleridge as a close neighbor. It is thought that around this time both Wordsworth and Coleridge began to lose their commitment to their shared radical beliefs and become more conservative in outlook. In 1801 they both were able to support the continuance of the war against France and, in later years, they both became supporters of the government. Their poetry stressed the restorative and beneficial powers of nature to heal and make well the divided mind. These concerns with powers and influence of nature and its interaction with the individual self came to be regarded as one of the hallmarks of Romantic Poetry. Romantic poetry is often defined in terms of its interest in nature, the self and imagination.

Wordsworth and Coleridge published a collection of verse entitled 'Lyrical Ballads' in 1978. This collection contained the poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798.” The place discussed and praised in the poem was common tourist stopping-off place, made famous by William Gilpin's picturesque guidebooks of the region. As we know that Wordsworth had visited the area around the abbey in 1973 when he had just returned from revolutionary France and become separated from his lover, Annette Vallon. He fathered  also a daughter by his beloved. It was the time of war between Britain and revolutionary France. Wordsworth felt alienated from his own country because of his sympathy for the Revolution as well as depressed by the increasingly violent turn which the Revolution had taken. The poem is intensely personal examination of Wordsworth's own inner thoughts and is concerned with the growth and development of his moral and imaginative self. To be specific, the poem celebrates Wordsworth's rediscovery of the capacity of feel.

The poem begins in the present and refers to Wordsworth's first visit to 'Tintern Abbey' in 1793;

"Five years have passed; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear

  ……………………………………

………………………………………

The Hermit sits alone." 

The first twenty lines or so suggest the tranquility and harmony that the poet has now achieved in the present. All human and natural activities are merged together with the landscape. The signs of human activity, the cottages, the pastoral farms, the orchards and the wreaths of smoke are celebrated. The opening few lines evoke a calm and meditative mood. Then Wordsworth moves from the external landscape to describe his own inner state of consciousness. He talks about what he has gained personally since his first visit to the Wye Valley. He has been able to carry the landscape he first saw in his mind and this has calmed and healed his psyche. The memory of the landscape first glimpsed in 1793 has brought him restoration in his 'hours of weariness'. He associates the weariness with the materialism of city or urban life. Moreover, he claims that the memory of the landscape has led to a growth in his moral sense. He says that the memory of landscape made him a better man. Further, he says that he has attained a sense of spirituality from the vision he had of the Wye Valley those five years ago. He describes a state of heightened perception in which he is no longer aware of the physical and material forms of nature but is instead aware of an inner, spiritual force which permeates the natural world and exists within humanity as well. The experience comes through sense but transcends the senses; the physical eye is made quiet by the power of harmony. In line 33 – 48, Wordsworth claims that we achieve spiritual insight and we see 'into the life of things'; 'a blessed mood' in which we lose our sense of self and become aware of a transcendent sense of unity, and of ourselves as a part of that unity. Thus Wordsworth claims he has gained things since his first visit to the Wye Valley/Bank of the Wye:    

·       1) the soothing influence that the landscape has had on his mind,    making him feel less stressed and alienated

·        2)  his moral sense has been increased almost unconsciously, and

·        3)  he has received the gift of spirituality

The experience of the landscape has been absorbed into the mind and contemplated upon over a period of years, what Wordsworth referred to as 'recollection in tranquility' in the 'Preface' to Lyrical Ballads.

In the poem, Wordsworth remembers his state of mental anguish, describing himself as behaving like a man; " Wherever nature led: more like a man

                   Flying from something that he dreads, than one

                   Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then

                   ………………………………………………… "

His attitude to nature has changed from the days of his childhood when the form of nature are an appetite, something desired and consumed without thinking; an animal passion. He is here dimly aware of another presence in nature than that of himself, but not aware of what it is. We thus move in nature from the thoughtless enjoyment of nature in childhood, to the consciousness of the reality of nature's presence in adulthood. Since 1793 he claims to now look on nature with a consciousness of the problems and troubles of the world;

"……………….. For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still sad music of humanity,"

Such problems are represented as timeless and ever recurring. Wordsworth argues that we move from a child-like and unthinking joy in our relationship with nature, to a state where we become aware of the ties we have to other people, and from that state to a mystical awareness of the these sense of the divine presence in nature. This inevitably means the loss of the child's vision of the unity of man and nature. Nevertheless, he claims that he has been recompensed for this loss of that original sate, by a sense of the visionary intensity he occasionally experiences when contemplating the natural landscape:

"A presence that disturbs me with the joy

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:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things…………"

Wordsworth describes a sublime moment of vision of the interaction between the outer world of the landscape and the inner world of the poet: subjective poet and the objective world of nature. It is an inter-penetration of man and nature achieved through sense perception. It is perceived by 'the light of the setting suns', 'the round ocean' and the 'blue sky' that we gain an impression of the spiritual, glimpsing the divine through natural objects. The poem considers the two worlds; the inner and the outer at the point of their intersection. Love of nature leads to love of man, it reconciles us to humanity. Nature is described as:

"In nature and the language of the sense

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being."

One understands, by his poem that Wordsworth is restored as a person, mentally, morally and socially, by the power of nature. Thus, he considers nature as God or healer.

The final verse of paragraph of the poem returns us to 1798, when the poem was written, and looks forward to the future. The poet imagines his sister Dorothy, who accompanied him on his second to the Wye Valley, as a kind of 'second self' for the poet. Readers return to details of the landscape that are described in the beginning of the poem which echo the opening description. In other words, the ends where it begins, a unified and circular journey in time from the present to the past, then into the future and back to the present.

My reflection:-

Though the poem is based on Wordsworth's personal feelings and thoughts, it is true in the life of contemporary people of that time. Those who were living a stressed life could be refreshed if they could enjoy the sublime moment in nature. Nature is the divine healer only which erases people's mental turmoil caused by human's earthly greatness and infidelity. Lost happiness and even divided mind can be restored if a man visits true wilderness. Present, past and future of human are always related but the present is the most important one. This poem vividly presents the features and beliefs of romanticism as nature is the principal subject matter of romantic poets, who introduce us with new way of looking at nature. 

(Strictly based on 'English Literature in Context' Edited by Paul Poplawski)