Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey: Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
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The Poem
This 160-line poem is autobiographical, written in the first person and in the poet’s own persona. The poem is
subtitled “On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour.” It is set at Tintern, a ruined abbey next to the
River Wye in the West of England.
The poet opens with the observation that five years have passed since he was last there. He continues with a
description of the peaceful landscape. Line 23 marks a transition in time and place. He recalls that in moments
of weariness in noisy towns, the memory of this landscape has calmed and restored him in body and mind.
These pleasant feelings promote kind and loving actions in life. They also bring with them a more sublime
gift: transcendental experiences, beyond the everyday state of consciousness, which William Wordsworth was
to refer to in his later poem The Prelude (1850) as “spots of time.”
The poet describes such an experience as a serene and blessed mood capable of lightening life’s burdens. The
awareness leads into a state of such deep rest that the breath and heartbeat are suspended, though the mind is
wide awake—“we become a living soul.” In this joyful and harmonious state, the poet says, sense perception
is directed inward. There are no objects of perception for the eye to see. Instead, the perception is opened to
the inner spiritual life that informs creation.
At line 66, the poet shifts his attention to comparing his passionate, unthinking, animal-like enjoyment of the
landscape five years ago with his more philosophical response now—underscored by “the still, sad music of
humanity.” Now, he is also aware of a spiritual presence imbuing nature’s many forms and the mind of man,
impelling both the perceiving consciousness and the objects of perception. This awareness inspires his mature
love for nature, which fosters and nourishes his finest thoughts and feelings.
The final section of the poem centers on the poet’s sister Dorothy, who accompanies him. In her “wild eyes,”
he recaptures the passion of his youth. He says a prayer for Dorothy, confident that Nature never betrayed the
“heart that loved her.” Nature’s sublimating effect on the mind is proof against evil, unkindness, and
world-weariness, and preserves one’s faith that the world is full of blessings.
A prayer for Dorothy’s old age begins at line 135. The poet asks that her mind might be a dwelling-place for
beautiful forms and sounds, just as in the past he has been restored and uplifted by memories of this
landscape. If her life should then be tainted with fear or pain, then the memory of his prayer will bring healing
thoughts. If they are separated by then, she will not forget that they stood together on the banks of the Wye.
Nor will she forget that on his second visit, this place was dearer to him, both because it had grown in
significance in his mind and because Dorothy was with him.
Forms and Devices
The imagery of the poem in many cases brings out contrasts between opposites. For example, the “blessed
mood” (line 38) is introduced, then defined in terms of its opposite value: In the lines that follow, the key
words are “burthen,” “mystery,” “heavy,” “weary weight,” and “unintelligible.” Then, in line 42, the
Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
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Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey: Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
burden built up over three lines is suddenly lifted in the resolution “Is lightened.” The line rests in a
momentary pause in which all tension is released.
The poet goes on to build an experience of an opposite kind—an account of the transcendental experience that
nullifies the burden. The opposites within this description take the reader into the realms of the paradoxes of
spiritual experience: The expected motion of the blood and breath is set against their state of suspension; the
deep rest of the body is set against the alertness of the spirit. Also noteworthy is the “presence” (line 95) that
“disturbs” him with “joy”—an apparent contradiction that makes intuitive sense.
A similar process of juxtaposition of opposite values is at work in the poet’s tribute to nature. In rhetorical
style and over several lines, the poet builds a sense of the power of nature to fortify the human spirit, in such
words as “joy to joy,” “inform,” “impress,” “quietness and beauty,” and “feed with lofty thoughts.” Then,
in symmetrical structure, the negative influences are detailed. Evocative use of alliteration is made in “the
sneers of selfish men,” and “greetings” set against “no kindness” is a telling paradox. Yet the passage does
not rest on the negative side: The reader is moved along to the resolution (lines 133-135), a moving
affirmation of life’s joys and fullness.
The poem is in the blank verse form of iambic pentameter, with five feet per line, each foot consisting of a
weak and a strong stress. Though this metrical form closely approximates natural spoken English, it is capable
of evoking immense grandeur, as one sees in the passage describing the “presence” of nature (lines 94-103).
The music of this passage can be fully appreciated only when it is read aloud. The rhetorical device of
repeating the introductory phrase “and the . . .” creates an ecstatic effect of an accumulation of blessings. The
spondees (two consecutive strong stresses) combined with long vowel sounds add particular emphasis to
certain images: The first two syllables of “round ocean,” and “blue sky” are examples. The imagery also
adds to the sense of the “presence” pervading nature as a vital being: A “dwelling” normally refers to
something belonging to a person; the air is “living”; the spirit “rolls through all things.”
Themes and Meanings
The central theme of the poem is typically Wordsworthian: the interactive relationship between the perceiving
awareness, “the mind of man,” and nature. In the poet’s view, perception is as much active and creative as
passive and receptive. Reality depends upon the quality of the onlooker’s perception, and this changes with
time. The poet’s youthful perception of the area around Tintern Abbey was different from that of his mature
view. Five years later, his mature perceptions are less passionate and more thoughtful. He no longer sees
nature as divorced from the human condition (lines 91-94).
He has developed the ability to see a level of reality beyond sensory impressions—the spirit underlying the
myriad forms of nature, which animates and unites perceiver and objects of perception. For example, the
description of the Tintern landscape (lines 4-23) is noteworthy for the blurring of distinctions between objects:
the orchards that melt into the woods, the farms green to the door, the smoke among the trees—all bespeak a
synthesizing, unifying perception.
Central to Wordsworth’s vision are “spots of time” (The Prelude)—profound spiritual experiences that he
describes as having a renovating, uplifting, and nourishing virtue. In “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above
Tintern Abbey,” worldly cares are twice referred to in terms of heaviness or burdens (lines 39-40, 55). Set
against them is the ability of the “serene and blessed mood” to lighten their weight (line 42). More important,
these experiences culture joy and harmony in the poet’s awareness, allowing him to “see into the life of
things.” This theme is expanded in the extraordinary vision of the one spirit pervading nature and human
consciousness in lines 94-103. The poet’s moments of communion with nature endure, independent of
inhospitable surroundings. Amid the noise of towns and cities, his spirit would turn to this landscape for
Forms and Devices
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Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey: Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
regeneration—emphasizing the power of the human spirit to create its own reality.
Yet a tension runs through the poem that pulls against this affirmative theme. In Dorothy’s “wild eyes,” he
recaptures his youthful passion, but one senses an underlying yearning for “what [the poet] was once”—and is
no longer. Similarly, he prays that her memories will render her mind “a mansion for all lovely forms” in her
later years, but he is preoccupied with the pain and grief she may suffer. He anticipates separation from her
and his consequent inability to “catch from [her] wild eyes these gleams of past existence.” Such thoughts
reveal a deep anxiety about the passing of time and the decline and loss it may bring.
Many readers identify a lack of conviction behind Wordsworth’s protest (lines 86-89) that he does not mourn
the passing of the “dizzy raptures” of his youth and note a wistfulness in his references to that time being past
(lines 84-86). In his assertion that maturity brings “Abundant recompence,” he seems to be trying to convince
himself that the gain is worth the loss. In this respect, this poem invites comparison with “Ode: Intimations of
Immortality” (published in 1807). The “Ode” was inspired by Wordsworth’s “sense of the indomitableness
of the spirit within me” (annotation by Wordsworth, compiled in 1843 by Isabella Fenwick) yet at the same
time is an elegy to the “visionary gleam” of his youthful perception of nature.
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Themes and Meanings
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