Assignment:

British Romantic Literature

Q: Discuss ‘Tintern Abbey’ as the document of the growth of a poet’s mind.

A: William Wordsworth’s epic poetic legacy rests on a large number of

significant poems, varying in length and weightiness from the short, simple lyrics
of the 1790s to the vast expanses of ‘The Prelude’, thirteen books long in
its 1808 edition. However, the themes that run through Wordsworth’s poetry, his
use of language and imagery to express those themes, remain remarkably
consistent throughout the Wordsworth canon, adhering fundamentally to the
tenets he set out for himself in the 1802 preface to ‘Lyrical Ballads’.
Wordsworth argued that poetry should be written in the natural language of
common speech, rather than in the lofty and elaborate diction, that was then
thought of as “poetic.” He held that poetry ought to offer access to the emotions
contained in memory, that the first principle of poetry should be pleasure, and its
supreme obligation is to provide pleasure through a rhythmic and beautiful
expression of feeling—for all human sympathy, he held, is based on a subtle
pleasure principle that is “the naked and native dignity of man.”

The poem, ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey’, popularly
called ‘Tintern Abbey’, is an exemplification of Wordsworth’s perspective
towards Nature, towards Man, and his philosophy of life. This poem, was written
on 13th July, 1798 and published in the same year in the volume, ‘Lyrical Ballads’.
Wordsworth wrote down this poem as it naturally came to his mind. “I began it,”
he says, “ upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye and concluded it just as I
was leaving Bristol in the evening after a ramble of four or five days with my
sister. Not a line of it was altered, not any part of it written down till I reached
Bristol.” He visited the place first in 1793 and revisited it, five years later in 1798.
The poem was composed immediately after his second visit to the place.

The poem’s significance lies as a testimony of the several phases of the

development of the poet’s mind-set towards Nature. Wordsworth loved nature not
for its outward splendour and magnificence marked in the picturesque hills, the
mountains, the streams, the fields and the woodlands, but as the visible
personification of the sublime grandeur. This attitude, previously absent in his
boyhood, came to him when he became a mature man. The acknowledgement of
this development in his attitude towards Nature is given richly in ‘The Prelude’,
which the poet calls ‘the Poem of my own Life’, as well as revealed in a
summarized form in ‘Tintern Abbey’.

The first stage was the poet was in his boyhood or his adolescence, when he
enjoyed only the rudimentary pleasure of living in contact with nature. At that
juncture, he derived from Nature ‘coarser pleasures’. The pleasures of his past
were the pleasures that came from the body, the body, which he considered, was
very primitive and animal-like. As a boy, he “bounded o’er the mountains” and
through the streams. In those days, he says, nature made up his whole world to
him, “nature was all in all”: waterfalls, mountains, and woods gave shape to his
passions, his appetites, and his love. The beautiful objects of nature charmed him,
the deep caverns, the chasms and sky-high cliffs engendered in him, only a boy
then, a feeling of awe. He acted more like a man “flying from something that he
dreads than one / Who sought the thing he loved.” The poet’s delight was so
extraordinary that he proclaims his incapacity to paint what then he was. The
sounding cataract haunted him like a passion; the tall rock, the mountain, the deep
and gloomy wood, their colours and their forms, were then to him an appetite:
“The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
 Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite;”

At that stage, he had “a feeling and a love”, that had no “remoter charm” than
what thought “supplied nor any interest” that his mortal eyes could not gather for
him. In other words, the poet at that stage relished only the sensuous pleasures in
contact with nature, and did not have a ripened and matured reflective mind.
Come the second stage, the sensuousness gives way to more refined feeling. The
poet no longer finds the aching joys supplied by coarser pleasures and the dizzy
raptures:

“That time is past,

And all its aching joys and dizzy raptures.”

However, he does not “mourn” the loss, because he had “abundant recompense”
for the loss in the form of other gifts that followed. He now looks on Nature not
with the eyes of a thoughtless youth, but takes refuge in her, being miserable by
the “still, sad music of humanity” that goes on perpetually troubling the human
soul. The poet slowly lapses into a mystical consciousness as he feels an
existence that ”disturbs” him with elevated thoughts and a sublime sense of
something far more deeply entangled. He can now appreciate the presence of
something far more refined, potent, and fundamental in the light of the setting
suns, the ocean, the air itself, and even in the mind of man; this energy seems to
him:
“A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.”

For that reason, he says, he still loves nature, still loves mountains and pastures
and woods, for they “anchor” his purest thoughts and guard the heart and soul of
his “moral being.” Thus to Wordsworth, Nature not only offers sensuous
pleasures, the rocking delights, but enables him in his mature years to discover
not only a bond between Nature and Man but a bond that ties up the whole
creation. The poet now grows into a universal man sharing the ‘Weltschmerz’, a
feeling of melancholy and world-weariness. With a mind made sober by the
understanding of life, he now becomes insightful and hears from nature the
“harmonious and cathartical music” welling up from the heart of the universe.
This music is not harsh or raucous but is potent enough to subdue and pacify a
mind that runs excitedly, delighting in the sensuous pleasures offered by nature.
The music is not jubilant as mortal men are inherently sorrowful, with sorrow
lying deep-rooted in their hearts. To Wordsworth, nature is, therefore, not a
distinctive and detached entity having no association with the man who suffers
from myriad afflictions, but the poet discovers Nature reacting to the sorrow of
Man and commiserates with him. The pantheistic experience that speaks of God
being intrinsic in and transcendent from this universe constitutes Wordsworth’s
mystical philosophy. Moreover, as the poet heard Nature echoing the still, sad
music of humanity, he felt the cosmic, hence natural, spirit present in the mind of
man as well. This is the third stage of the development of the poet’s attitude
towards Nature.

In the final stage, the poet recognizes the effect of Nature in determining his moral
character. He is obligated to nature for feelings of unremembered pleasure that
have a huge influence on the best part of a decent man’s life and that inspires one
to do “little, nameless, unremembered acts of sympathy and of love.” The poet
owes to nature another gift, of aspect more sublime:
“… that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened.”
Wordsworth explains the character of this blessed mood too:
“…..that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on, –
Until the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Is almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul.”

This state of trance is a spiritual experience. It gifted the poet with an eye made
quiet by “the power of harmony and the deep power of joy” that helps a man “see
into the life of things.” This is the highest stage of the gradual development of
Wordsworth’s attitude to Nature and essentially the growth of his poet’s mind,
the stage when a man discovers union in variety, the singleness of the entire
domain of creation.

The poet is a lover of Nature, for not only its gifts, but also how it has shaped his
mind gradually into that of a mystic who enjoys trance and discovers the presence
of a spirit in all things, including the mind of man.The poet finally asserts that he
is a worshipper of nature who came to visit the place unwearied in that service of
worshipping with warmer love. This expression, however, according to the poet,
would be scant; it would be better to say that he came on his mission with a “far
deeper zeal/ Of holier love.” Wordsworth says in the third section of the poem
that “…Nature never did betray/ the heart that loved her…” he gratefully
acknowledges that through all their life, Nature has led them from joy to joy by
informing their mind with quietness and beauty and feeding it with lofty thoughts
so deeply and impressively that neither evil tongues, rash judgements, or the
sneers of selfish men, nor greetings with no kindness, nor all the tedious
intercourse of daily life can ever agitate them or disturb their cheerful faith that
all they behold is full of blessings. Nature has insulated his mind with steady
quietness and joy.
‘Tintern Abbey’, ever since its publication, has always been acclaimed as poetic
marvel. A serious poet that Wordsworth was, ever since his boyhood to his
maturing years, he remained in close contact with Nature and it was Nature that
gradually shaped his mind. ‘Tintern Abbey’ enumerates this very process, and
thus, becomes a document of the growth of the poet’s mind.

Bibliography:
➢ William Wordsworth, ‘Preface to the lyrical Ballads’,in Romantic Prose
and Poetry, ed. Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling
➢ ‘Romantic Poets’, Worldview Critical Editions, ed. Kanav Gupta
➢ ‘Tintern Abbey as a Philosophical Poem. Does the Philosophy Overwhelm
the Poetry?’ by Sibaprasad Dutta
➢ ‘Tintern Abbey: A Document of Wordsworth's Spiritual Growth’ by
Sibaprasad Dutta
➢ https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/show-how-tintern-abbey-traces-
wordsworth-spiritual-145101