‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ by William Wordsworth has qualities of both a dramatic monologue and a lyrical ballad. The speaker is not alone as he describes the world around him, but his is the only voice that the reader will hear.
The poem is not written with a clear rhyme scheme, but rather, the poet has focused on meter. Throughout the poem can be found the pattern of iambic pentameter. This type of verse is made up of five sets of beats per line. The first beat is unstressed, followed by one stressed. The choice by the poet to avoid using any discernible rhyme scheme was due to the fact that he was addressing another person. This allows the poem to be read as one side of a conversation rather than a grand declaration.
First Stanza
Lines 1-8
Five ……………………
……………………. of the sky.
In the first lines the speaker, Wordsworth himself, makes clear that he has returned a place he has not been for “Five years,” or “five summers,” the bank of the river Wye in Derbyshire, England. These years that he has been apart from the landscape felt excruciating long. As if they were made up entirely of “five long winters!”
Wordsworth has finally come back to where he can hear “again…These waters,” and see them “rolling” down from the “mountain-springs.” These sounds that the speaker is hearing again for the first time are romanticized and described as being a “soft inland murmur” as if whispering voices are coming from somewhere farther “inland” than the speaker can see or detect.
He continues on to reiterate that he is “Once again…beholding” this place. He is looking around him and seeing steep cliffs. These cliffs are not just landmarks to admire but they force certain emotions to surface. They bring to his mind the “Thoughts of… deep seclusion.” This idea of finding peaceful seclusion in nature is not one at all unfamiliar to Wordsworth’s poetry. His status as one of the greatest poets of the Romantic period is solidified by poems such as “Lines Composed a Few Miles above…” The whole environment around the speaker is unified in its peace and solitude. From the land to the sky and everything in-between; he is permanent desiring a place within it.
Lines 9-18
The day is ………………….
…………………………from among the trees!
Wordsworth continues on to say that “The day” has come where he can once more “repose,” or relax, under a “dark sycamore” tree that is growing nearby. In this part of the landscape he currently is in, and is hoping to remain, there is a “plot” that contains a “cottage” as well as “orchard-tufts.”
He is looking around at the fruit orchards and seeing the they are filled with yet “unripe fruits” and all the leaves are composed of “one green hue.” Instead of standing out in contrast against the other foliage, they are camouflaged and “lose themselves” amongst the “groves and copses,” or small collections of trees. These orchards are a hint of what is to come. Change is always present and even though the land appears the same as it did to the speaker five years ago, nothing ever truly remains the same.
Wordsworth can see from his vantage point “hedge-rows,” lines and lines of small bushes that run through the landscape. Additionally, there are farms surrounding the property that run right up to the door of the cottage. There are others that live in the surrounding areas and “wreaths of smoke” are visible rising from the forest floor.
Lines 19-22
With ………………
…………alone.
This stanza concludes with four additional lines that expand on who may live in the environs. It seems to Wordsworth that, although he is not certain, that “vagrant dwellers” or “hermits” live out in the “houseless woods.” These homeless men sit “alone” in the woods; a state that the speaker envies.
Second Stanza
Lines 1-9
These …………...
…………feelings too
In the second stanza, consisting of twenty-eight lines, the speaker describes how the images he is now seeing anew have never truly left him. Though the landscape has long been out of sight, he has not been separate from it. He describes it as having not been to him “As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye.” The speaker has not completely forgotten it or been blinded to it.
Often times, when he has been in “lonely rooms” in the middle of the “din / Of towns and cities,” the memories have come to him. He is able to revisit the landscape within his mind and find comfort in it. It has brought him pleasure in times of “weariness.” Replacing frustration with “sensations sweet” that penetrate to his “blood…and …heart.” These thoughts are even able to possess his “purer mind” and bring it to a state of “tranquil restoration.”
Lines 10-19
Of ……………
…………………unintelligible world,
The stanza continues with Wordsworth describing how the memories bring him other “unremembered pleasures.” Their presence helps other happy memories to surface that have no “slight” or small, “influence / On…a good man’s life.” He needs these thoughts to continue on his path of goodness and continue to help others in any way he can. They improve him as a human being.
The next lines tell the reader what these happy thoughts might be. They could contain the times in a “man’s life” that he committed acts of “kindness and of love.” The speaker then turns to address nature itself. He says that he “may have owed” more to it than he has yet returned. It gave him a spiritual gift that he is never going to be able to return, his “blessed mood,” or aspect in which he lives. It helped, and helps, to alleviate the weight of the world.
Lines 20-28
Is lightened………...
………… life of things.
Nature is going to affect the speaker for the rest of his life and even allow him to value the world, and the spiritual peace he has found over his “corporeal frame.” When he is “laid asleep / In body” he is able, through his “living soul,” to find a “harmony” and experience a “deep power of joy.” This joy has allowed him to see deeper into life than others do. Because he is so deeply a part of the natural world he can see “into the life of things.”
Third Stanza
If this ………………
………...turned to thee!
The third stanza of “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” is shorter, consisting of only nine lines. In this short stanza the speaker addresses the possibility that the interior world in which he has been living could be “but a vain belief.” He could have been steadfast in his belief but, ignorant of the fact that he was wrong. This thought is only fleeting and he immediately turns from it to say, “oh!” How can that possibly be the case when in “darkness” and surrounded by “joyless daylight,” or days that bring the speaker no joy even though they should, he has “turned to thee / O sylvan Wye!” He has depended on the memories of this “sylvan” or wooded paradise on the river Wye when he has been disturbed by the “fever of the world.” He is worshipful of this nature and contributes his peace and happiness to how it has changed him.
Fourth Stanza
And now…………………..
………......dare to hope,
In the fourth stanza of the poem, He describes how his mind is now “gleaming” with thoughts that are “dim” and “half-extinguished.” He is recalling how he felt when he was here previously and that picture of his own being is being “revived” once more Additionally, he states that he hopes that from this visit he is able to gain “life and food / For future years.” This trip will, he thinks, provide him with memories that will sustain him in all the dull moments of life that are yet to come. He is re-nourishing his soul and inner paradise to which he will escape.
Though changed...............
.................I cannot paint
The speaker is “daring to hope” that even though he comes to this placed changed from when he was here last, that everything will still be to him as it once was. He remembers how when he first visited this landscape and “came among the hills” he was like a “roe” in how he “bounded” over the rises and falls. He crossed “deep rivers” and followed nature wherever it “led” him. When he was here last he knew immediately how important this place was going to be to him and fled into the hills in a futile attempt to completely escape from his own life. At this time in his life, nature was to him, “all in all.” It was the end all and be all of his life. There was nothing of greater value or importance to the speaker. This is the state of mind he is once more seeking out.
What ............
..........for this
He continues to attempt a description of how he was back then, but does not believe it will be possible. Instead of giving the reader a straight forward description, he uses metaphors and romanticized language to a paint a picture of the type of emotional and spiritual state he was in. He was so consumed by the nature around him that he took it in like food. The narrator thrived on “the tall rock, / The mountain” and the dark woods around him. The feelings they created within the speaker were exacting and precise. He knew where they came from and was content to see the world as it was. He did not need fantasies or additions to the real world to make it more meaningful to him. He did not need “a remoter charm” to entrance him. The speaker is aching for the time when nature was truly all that he needed. He remembers the joys, and how it created in him “dizzy rapture.” That time is sadly, “past.”
Faint I, nor ................
..............sense sublime
Although the speaker is saddened by the change in his condition he is not depressed. He knows that other pleasures “Have followed” and that he should not really “mourn” for the loss of the past. He has been able to look through his base emotions and thoughts and see Nature not as he did when he was a “thoughtless youth” but as something far more sustaining. He is older now, wiser, and understands how important moments of are peace are for a life lived amongst humanity. This new wisdom was enshrined in him when he “felt / A presence that disturbs” him with joyful, “elevated thoughts.” He has felt the power of God, or Nature as God, in the world that surrounds him. The narrator can take the memory of this “presence” and carry it within him.
Of ...........
................the mighty world
What the speaker feels of this new “presence” is much more powerful than what he held inside him in the past. Before, he only took memory away with him when he left, now he has a belief that is stronger than anything else. The “presence” that he feels is like “the light of setting suns” and as powerful as “the round ocean,” air, and sky to the “mind of a man.” It is beyond comprehension and therefore, unfading and undeterred by modernity. The way in which he understands nature may have changed, but he is still a “lover” of it. He still worships the “meadows and the woods” and is thrilled in all “that we behold / From this green earth.”
He describes how nature fuels everything in the world, the world is entirely made of, and created by nature. It “impels / All thinking things.” The speaker’s tone is reverential filled with deep emotion. This tone will continue through the remaining lines of the poem as the speaker delves deeper into why exactly the natural world is so meaningful to him.
Of eye, .......
............my moral being.
In the final lines of the fourth stanza the speaker describes how even though he, and others, are apt through their sense, to hear and see things differently than how they truly are, he is still “well pleased.” He thrills in the “language” of his own senses and considers nature to be the “guardian” of his “heart,” and the steadfast supporter of his “purest thoughts.” It has been to him a “guide” as well as a “nurse.” Finally, he states, it is the “soul” of his morality. Just as the Christian God helps determine what is right and wrong for many around the world, Nature serves this purpose for the narrator.
Fifth Stanza
Nor perchance, .............
...........what I was once,
The emotion that the reader glimpsed at the end of the last stanza is sustained through the remainder of the poem. The speaker begins this section by stating that he will never “Suffer [his] genial spirits to decay” due to the fact that he now understands Nature. The beliefs he harbors within him are permanent. They are there with him at this present moment as he stands “upon the banks” of a river looking out on this place he loves. At this point in the poem the narration takes a turn as it becomes clear that there is someone else with the speaker. He has not been thinking allowed but explaining himself to someone near. He calls her, “thou my dearest Friend.” She is to him as close as another person can be and he felt the need to explain to her how he has come to be the way that he is. He listens to her as she speaks and feels the catch of his “heart.” He sees how he used to be and remembers his “former pleasures” as he looks into her “wild eyes.” Wordsworth is able, through only a short glance, is able to see in her the person he once was. It also becomes completely clear at this time, if the reader was not yet convinced, that the speaker is Wordsworth himself.
My dear, ...................
...............Therefore let the moon
He is, in this tender moment, directing his monologue to his sister, Dorothy. They are extraordinarily close and he wishes to share with her his adoration for NatureHe is searching for a way to make his sister understand that placing your heart within the hands of Nature is without risk. It cannot break your heart or shatter your faith. Nature will, through the years of ones life, lead a devotee from “joy to joy” and “impress” upon one “quietness and beauty.” Her life, he states, will be full of “lofty thoughts” that carry one above the “sneers” of the modern world. One will no longer be bothered by the “dreary intercourse of daily life.” There will truly be nothing with the ability to disturb one’s peace. “We” will forever know that “our” life is “full of blessings”
Shine on thee in ...............
.................perchance—
At this point the poem is starting to conclude. Wordsworth wants to make sure that his sister knows that if this is the life that she desires, she should “let the moon” shine on her during her walks. She should feel the “mountain-winds” on her skin and not resist them. When, Wordsworth says, one has lived this way for a long time, the natural world will become a part of one’s life, guiding all decisions and choices of morality. He states that she will never forget this place and it will become a paradise for “all sweet sounds and harmonies.” When all of this happens, and if she was to fall into “solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,” hopefully, he implores, “thou [will] remember me” and everything that has been said.
If I should ......................
...............far deeper zeal
If, Wordsworth says, “I” have died and moved somewhere where “I no more can hear / Thy voice” hopefully she will not forget that “We stood together” on the banks of the Wye. This place is important as it is where Nature came to both the speaker and his listener. This place, Wordsworth says, should fill the future with even “holier love.” The speaker says that nature will “create” in the listener a “far deeper zeal” for the goodness of life. His sister will not be run down my “dreary” normalcy.
Of holier love.............
................... themselves and for thy sake!
The last five lines of the poem are spent in finalizing the speaker’s thoughts on how the future should go. He does not want his sister to every forget what he has told her, nor what she herself has felt by the river. He wants her to remember how important she and the landscape around them are to him and says that even though he has been gone from this place for so long, it is dear to him. It is valuable in its own right and because it is giving the same gift it gave to him to her.
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