Wordsworth

Lines Composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey�

• Wordsworth wrote “Tintern Abbey” during the Industrial Revolution, when rural areas throughout Europe were being transformed into centers of manufacturing and production. In the poem, the speaker visits a natural, rural place that he sees as preserved and intact, not yet altered by industrialization. The poem implicitly responds to the industrialization of society by suggesting that urban life is lonely and depleting, and that the natural world has the power to restore and nourish the human soul. So powerful is nature, the speaker argues, that even simple memories of time spent in such pristine landscapes can be healing.

• The poem makes clear that urban life is difficult for the speaker, who uses words such as “din,” “lonely,” “dreary,” “evil,” and “selfish” to describe life in “towns and cities.” These descriptions suggest that daily life in these settings is noisy, isolating, tiring, and even immoral. Such environments—far from being nourishing or comforting—are emotionally and morally taxing for the speaker, and, the poem implies, for everyone who lives in them.

• Despite this, the speaker suggests that time spent in nature has sustained and nourished him, and that it will continue to do so in the future. The speaker recalls how in “hours of weariness” he has remembered the time he spent in the poem's beautiful natural setting, and this has brought him “tranquil restoration.” This suggests that nature is so powerfully restorative that even the memory of it has the power to calm and nourish the human soul.

• The speaker goes on to say that his current visit to this place will comfort him in years to come. This current visit gives him “present pleasure” as well as “life and food / For future years.” By describing this visit as “food,” the speaker suggests that in the future, remembering his time in this natural setting will nourish and support him. The mere thought of nature, the poem implies, is as restorative as actual food.

• Finally, the speaker suggests that time in nature is replenishing not just for the speaker but for human beings in general. Addressing his sister, the speaker suggests that memories of this natural place are restorative not only for him, but for her as well. The speaker says that if, in the future, she experiences “solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,” remembering the time they spent together in this place will bring her “healing thoughts,” or comfort her.

• The speaker says it has been five years since he last visited this setting. That's five summers and five winters, which felt especially long. Now that he's back, he once again can enjoy the gentle sound of rivers and streams running down from the mountains. He again gets to marvel at the high and impressive cliffs. The sight of these cliffs within this remote, untouched setting puts him in a thoughtful, reflective mood. The cliffs visually link this quiet landscape to the calm silence of the sky. The speaker comments on how, as in his last visit, he can sit underneath a shady sycamore tree and from there look down at the surrounding farmland in the valley

• . He notes that because of the time of year (mid-summer), the fruit on the trees is not yet ripe and the orchards are completely green, blending in with the surrounding trees. The lines of bushes that he can see are, from his vantage point, tiny and almost indistinguishable as deliberately planted rows, and the picturesque, rural farms also look almost completely green. In between the trees he sees circles of smoke drifting up silently, as though delivering some unknown message. He imagines that this smoke could be coming from wandering people living in the woods, or from the fire of a devoutly religious person living alone in a cave.

• Even while the speaker was away from this beautiful landscape, he didn’t forget it and could still picture it vividly. While surrounded by the noisiness and loneliness of urban settings, remembering the beauty of this place helped the speaker through difficult and tiring times, bringing him pleasant feelings within his body and mind. These memories helped him feel calm and restored, and even affected his actions, pushing him toward small, daily acts of goodness and care for other people. The speaker further thanks these memories for granting him an even more immense and awe-inspiring the gift: that wonderful, precious mood in which he felt free from the burdens of the unknown, and in which the heaviness of dealing with this often confusing, senseless world was lessened.

• In that calm, precious state of mind, the speaker could in a sense transcend the restrictions of his physical body, which would become totally still as the speaker became only his soul. In this state, he says, his vision became silent, calm, powerful, and with a feeling of equanimity and happiness he had insight into life itself.

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• The speaker goes on to offer the possibility that he simply imagined this experience, because it is something that he just wants to believe. He then rejects this possibility, however, commenting on how so many times, when unhappiness and the rush and stress of daily life have weighed heavily upon his heart, he has remembered this beautiful, landscape. Addressing the landscape directly, he says that within his mind or soul he has gone back to the woodlands of the Wye Valley for solace and comfort.

• The speaker's memories are like shining lights that have been half snuffed out, becoming darker or hard to see. There is a kind of sadness or confusion in the speaker's thoughts as the landscape, so often remembered as a picture in his mind, is now seen again in real life. At the same time, being in this landscape gives him the sense that in addition to the happiness he's experiencing right now, he will also have happiness in the future from remembering this current visit. He hopes that this is true, even though he is different from how he was when he was younger and first came here. His younger self was like a deer, jumping through the hills and alongside deep rivers and isolated streams alike, following nature.

• His younger self was someone running away from something that he feared, rather than running toward something he cared for. Even so, back then nature was everything to him, since he had already lost some of the less sophisticated happiness of his childhood. He can't express or showing the reader exactly how he used to be, though. As a younger man, the sound of a waterfall stuck with him, like a passion sticks with someone (perhaps painfully or frighteningly). Similarly, his younger self experienced the shapes and colors of the rock cliffs, the mountain, and the shade and darkness of the forest with a kind of hunger.

• The landscape filled the younger speaker with intense emotion and love, yet this experience was missing a deeper spiritual or intellectual aspect beyond what could physically be seen. The past is over, though, as are the emotional highs and lows of youth that were intense to the point of being painful or disorienting. The speaker isn’t weakened by this loss and doesn’t grieve it, however, because he has gained so much in exchange. Specifically, over time he has gained the ability to really see nature, not thoughtlessly as he did when he was younger, but with a full awareness of all the sadness and harmony that comes with being a human being. This awareness—this human music—is not jarring or unpleasant.

• Instead, it has a calming, maturing effect, helping the speaker grow out of his youthful intensity and naivety. Over time, the speaker has also come to experience a kind of force that is at once joyful and disturbing in the way that it broadens the scope of his thoughts. This force creates a profound, nearly overwhelming awareness of the way that everything is connected and part of a whole.

• This force, this sense of connection and unity, is present throughout the natural world and universe. It exists in the light of suns as they set, in the round ocean, the air, the blue sky, and in the human mind. This presence or force is a kind of power or living soul that makes all things possible, including the capacity for thought and everything that is thought about. This force is described as moving through everything in the universe with a motion similar to rolling waves. Because of all of this insight that he has gained, the speaker says, he loves the natural world, including the fields, forests, and mountains, and the equally powerful world of the human mind and human senses of sight and hearing, which, he says, work by half inventing and half observing the world.

• The speaker sees in nature and in the human senses what is most fundamental to his thinking and his best thoughts. He compares nature to a person or spiritual presence who nurtures, leads, and protects every part of him, including his heart, soul, and morality.

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• The speaker says that even if, by some chance, he hadn’t learned all of this, he still would not allow himself to lose his positive outlook. Addressing his sister, the speaker says that this is because she is there with him in this landscape.

• Calling her his closest friend, the speaker says that he sees and hears in her his former self, including the way he used to feel and understand things, and the pleasure and joy he used to experience. Celebrating this, the speaker expresses the hope that he will see his younger self in her longer so that she can experience this youthful happiness longer. He then offers a prayer for his sister’s future. He compares nature to a woman who is faithful, and who cares most for leading people through life joyfully.

• The speaker says that nature can shape human minds so well, make such a strong impression of beauty and calm, and nurture such a higher level of thinking, that through these gifts people can withstand all the difficulties and immorality of daily life, including cruel words, unfair or quick judgments, condescension, selfishness, and empty or fake interactions. In fact, he says, with the gifts of nature people can withstand everything that is wearing or difficult in day-to-day existence. In doing so, they can uphold a positive outlook and belief in the goodness and blessedness of life. The speaker prays that nature will always stay with and help his sister; he hopes that when she is alone, she will experience moonlight, and that she will feel the presence of the soft or slightly rainy wind from the mountains.

• He goes on to imagine her when she is older, and her current youthful happiness has been moderated into a more muted or quiet outlook. Then, her mind will be like a spacious, lofty house for everything that is beautiful, and everything that is melodious and harmonious will live in only in her memories. He hopes that if, at that point, she experiences pain, or loneliness, or fear, she will joyfully remember him addressing her now, and that this memory will be healing. The speaker then goes on to imagine that at this future point he might have died and can no longer see or hear his sister. He says that even if this is the case, his sister will remember that they were together in this landscape. She won’t forget, he says, that like a religious person he worshipped nature, and that he came to this setting out of this devotion. He describes his feeling for this place as not just ordinary love but as the stronger kind of devotional and sacred love.

“London, 1802”

• The speaker addresses John Milton and wishes the poet were still alive, noting that England needs him because the country has become like a swamp full of still water. To that end, things like religion, militaristic pursuits, literature, home life, and the country's economic glory no longer align with England's prosperous history. The speaker suggests that he and his fellow citizens have lost sight of everything but themselves, so he calls upon Milton to uplift the people of England after returning from the dead, hoping the famous poet will remind British society of its values, how to live virtuously, and how to recover its sense of liberation and strength.

• Praising Milton, the speaker compares his soul to a star that stood out from all others in the sky, adding that Milton's voice sounded like the ocean. Still addressing Milton, the speaker depicts him as possessing an intrinsic goodness and dazzling sense of freedom that was worthy of heaven itself. With these qualities, the speaker upholds, Milton led an ordinary life while happily devoting himself to religion. But even with his godly traits, Milton was never above even the most humbling responsibilities.

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• The speaker laments that 19th-century England has failed to maintain certain standards. These standards, the speaker believes, were perfectly exemplified by the 17th-century poet John Milton, a writer widely admired for his artistic innovation, religious devotion, and moral compass.
• With this in mind, the speaker presents Milton as the model off of which England should base itself, believing that the nation should learn from Milton’s integrity in order to reverse what the speaker sees as the country’s unfortunate decline. By celebrating Milton and the values of a bygone era, then, the speaker criticizes 19th-century England while upholding that the past can (and should) inform the way people think about the present.

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• The speaker’s concerns about the present are closely tied to the feeling that 19th-century England as a whole has become lazy and complacent. Suggesting that the nation is now “stagnant,” the speaker implies that England has lost touch with its core values. Unlike when Milton was writing in the 17th century, the speaker upholds, the country no longer thrives in the arts or uplifts its religious principles, having stalled when it comes to “altar, sword, and pen” (religion, military pursuits, and literature, respectively).

• Accordingly, the speaker calls upon Milton to restore things like “manners, virtue, freedom, [and] power” to the country, thereby implying not only that Milton represents these traits, but also that these are the very tenants that used to define England’s greatness. In this way, the speaker celebrates the commendable aspects of the nation (suggesting that the country is at least capable of virtue) while still critiquing it for letting these things fall by the wayside.

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• Furthermore, the speaker believes that it shouldn’t be particularly difficult for people to live up to Milton’s standards. This is because these standards aren’t that high in the first place, which is why the speaker chastises fellow citizens for failing to meet them. Milton, the speaker notes, lived in a “common way,” suggesting that the virtue he embodies isn’t actually all that rare, but rather unremarkable and commonplace.

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• And yet, the speaker makes it clear that these values have declined so much in British society that they are no longer “common.” It should be relatively easy, the speaker implies, to live like Milton. However, that it now seems extraordinary to exemplify this kind of virtue underscores just how far British society has fallen since Milton’s time.

• The speaker calls attention to England’s societal decline in the hopes of restoring the country, but “London, 1802” isn’t just about refreshing the nation’s image. After all, the speaker also maintains that leading a virtuous life leads to contentment. Indeed, the very values that the speaker celebrates can create a sense of “cheerful godliness.” This, in turn, means that British citizens have sabotaged their own happiness by letting their values slip.

• To regain this happiness, it seems, the speaker’s fellow citizens will have to look to the past and learn from honorable figures like Milton. With this in mind, Wordsworth’s speaker illustrates the usefulness of turning to history for guidance, ultimately arguing that doing so will improve individual lives as well as society at large.

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