Tintern Abbey Summary,Analysis and Explanation
1. Date and Occasion :[Tintern Abbey Summary]
The poem was composed by Wordsworth in July, 1798. It was first published in ‘Lyrical Ballads in the same year.
The occasion of the poem is a visit to the bank of the river Wye, already visited by the poet five years ago, in the company of Dorothy, the sister of the poet. The familiar scenes and the sonorous sounds of the place, previously seen, heard and enjoyed, gave rise to reflections on the significance of Nature’s influence on the poet’s mind, in various stages of his life-boyhood, youth and manhood. The previous visit was made by the poet alone and on-foot in 1793 in the course of a journey from Salisbury Plain to Wales.
2. Substance :
The poet revisits the banks of the river Wye near Tintern Abbey after an interval of five years. He is delighted to see once again the quiet beauty of the familiar scenes of the spot. As he stands on the bank of the river, the dim, old pictures revive in his mind again. The natural sights of the place greet his eyes. He has been long away from this place. But the memory of the place has ever persisted in his mind. It has given him joy and consolation infinite amid the din and bustle of the city. It has been not calming and restorative for him only. It has, too, aroused in him, almost unnoticed, the sweet sensations of pleasure, which had their results in the impulses of kindness and of love. He has also been indebted to his recollections of the scenes of the place for the creation of an ecstatic mood of mind in him.
In such a mood, he has been able to transcend the world of senses and realise the mystery of the entire cosmic harmony and joy. As the poet stands and looks, he recollects his association with Nature and traces the stages through which his response to her call has passed. His first and earliest love of Nature was mainly, masculine pleasures of a sportive boy. Then, in youth, there was his purely visual and sensual delight in natural objects in their beauty and melody. But those pleasures of his boyhood and youth are no more. He is now in his manhood in a mystic communion with Nature. He finds in her the presence of a spirit that moves through all elements and gives everything a life and a motion.
Nature is no longer to him an object of physical or sensual delight, but a great friend and educator-his moral support and sustenance-the guiding angel of his spirit. The poet knows the great gifts of Nature for men and feels that Nature never deserts any body who loves her. He looks at and exhorts his sister, who is standing by his side, assures her that in her evil days of suffering and isolations, the memory of this place of beautiful natural scenes as also the poet’s association with this will be an unfailing source of delight and solace for her.
3. Critical Appreciation :
Of the poem, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth himself says, “No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this.” Indeed, the poem is one of the greatest of Wordsworth’s poems. It reveals all the characteristic elements of Wordsworthian poetry. Wordsworth is acclaimed as a great poet of Nature, and no other poem, perhaps, illustrates so clearly and powerfully how much does she mean to him.
The poem has been called by Myers “the consecrated formulary of the Wordsworthian faith in Nature.” It shows him not merely as the lover but also the ‘worshipper of Nature’, — “Nature’s Priest.” It also contains the poet’s own exposition of his changing attitude towards Nature in different stages in his life. The first stage in his love of Naure was “simply a healthy boy’s delight in freedom and open air” sports in her bosom, which the poet calls “the coarser pleasures of my boyish days, and their glad animal movements when like a roe he bounded over the mountains,” Then came the second stage and then “the sounding cataract haunted him like a passion.”
It was purely a visual, sensuous love of natural objects-their sights and sounds. But as he passed his early youth, he lost his exuberant, passionate enjoyment of the beauty of Nature. The poet has passed into a mood which becomes profoundly spiritualised, religious. He now learns to look upon Nature with the sober and chastened feelings of a man whose heart has contemplated on human sorrows and sufferings. He can now feel one divine spirit diffused and working through the whole universe of Nature and Man:
“A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts,
And rolls through all things ………….
Nature in this stage of his spiritual development seems to have to him the significance of God, although this is not categorically stated.
“This is,” as a critic has finely commented, “a profound and undoctrinal pantheism, unfettered by moral accretions at a mere superficial level.” Herein is found Wordsworth’s belief in the existence of a mysterious Soul, a Supreme Being, that broods over all things and sustains the world of Nature as well as that of Man, yet does not live like ordinary living beings.
The romantic poet in Wordsworth is a mystic to have extra-ordinary visions and conceptions. The poem affords the best opportunity for considering this mysticism of Wordsworthian poetry. Wordsworth, it has been remarked by Aubrey de Vere, “looked at Nature as the mystic of the old perused page of the Holy Writ, making little of the letter, but passing through it to the spiritual interpretation.”
There was for him a world of divine reality behind and within the ordinary world of observation and experience-a world to which mere reason would never give access, but which was nevertheless opened to the spiritual faculty in man. Hints from this world come to men beyond the regions of time and sense. Such hints, as he says, suspend “even the motion of our human blood” and make us ‘living souls.’ They make us catch “a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused” and enables us “to see into the life of things.”
Matthew Arnold has rightly seized upon the “healing power” of Wordsworth’s own poetry as his signal contribution to European thought. In his Lines composed above Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth has sought to teach the healing power of Nature and the benefit of cultivating ; ‘roper intimacy with the soul of Nautre for humankind. He feels here greatly the animating, exhilerating and harmonising power of Nature which “never did betray the heart that truly loved her”. Here, again, his verse rises to a note of ecstasy to which, outside Wordsworth himself, there is no parallel in English poetry.
But his poetry must be judged apart from his philosophy and teachings. His lofty inspiration sets the poet above the teacher. He teaches, indeed, about the benign, soothing and even spiritualising power of Nature. But, as a poet, he has conveyed his message in a language full of subtlest suggestions to the common imagination. He has stirred the tenderest emotions of the heart by his utterances. He has released beauties that “haunt thoughts.” His verse seems to sway with an emotional intensity unique in its poetic appeals. He attains here a rare fusion of poetry and philosophy. Written in unrhymed ten syllabled iambic lines, the poem is in the blank verse metre. This is the metre in which Wordsworth is found to excel as evident in. The Prelude as also in this very poem.
4. Analysis of the Arguments given in the Poem
Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey or simply Tintern Abbey is comparatively a much longer poem. The arguments, stated in the poem, need be analysed for a convenient reading. Such an analysis may be attempted thus :
I. The poet’s description of the scenic charms and the charming sonority of the natural surroundings of the river Wye.
The poet revisits the banks of the river Wye, already visited by him five years back, all by himself. He hears and sees natural sights and sounds, enjoyed by him in his previous visit, once again. He stretches his imagination to guess the source of the coil of smoke, seen at a distance above the wood. (Lines 1-22)
II. The poet’s indebtedness to the memory of the place.
The poet’s admission of his indebtedness, in various ways, to the memory of the loveliness of the natural world, around the river, Wye, during the period of his physical absence from the place, and his assertion of its happy effect on him in future days is quite distinct. (Lines 23-65)
III. The poet’s tracing of his emotional response to the appeal of Nature in different stages in his life-in his boyhood, youth and manhood.
The poet traces how his mind has been affected differently by Nature in his boyhood, youth and manhood. He asserts that his love for Nature has remained ever firm, although its nature has changed in different phases in his life. Finally, he admits Nature as his unfailing source of his nurture and guidance and his moral elevation.
(Lines 65-111)
IV. The poet’s exhortation to his sister Dorothy and his assurance to her of the persistingly salutary role of Nature and his own unchanging devotion to her as her priest and worshipper.
The poet addresses his companion, sister Dorothy, to assure her of the unfailing friendship of Nature and her diverse endowments to mankind. He advises her to enjoy the gifts of Nature and reminds her of his own prolonged and tireless service and dedication to her. (Lines 112-159)
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