Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth

Full Text

    Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
    Of five long winters! and again I hear
    These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
    With a sweet inland murmur.[4]--Once again
    Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
    Which on a wild secluded scene impress
    Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
    The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
    The day is come when I again repose
    Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
    These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
    Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,
    Among the woods and copses lose themselves,
    Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb
    The wild green landscape. Once again I see
    These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
    Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms
    Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke
    Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,
    With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
    Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
    Or of some hermit’s cave, where by his fire
    The hermit sits alone.

                           Though absent long,
    These forms of beauty have not been to me,
    As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
    But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
    Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
    In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
    Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
    And passing even into my purer mind
    With tranquil restoration:--feelings too
    Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
    As may have had no trivial influence
    On that best portion of a good man’s life;
    His little, nameless, unremembered acts
    Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
    To them I may have owed another gift,
    Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
    In which the burthen of the mystery,
    In which the heavy and the weary weight
    Of all this unintelligible world
    Is lighten’d:--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
    Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
    In body, and become a living soul:
    While with an eye made quiet by the power
    Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
    We see into the life of things.

                                    If this
    Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft,
    In darkness, and amid the many shapes
    Of joyless day-light; when the fretful stir
    Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
    Have hung upon the beatings of my heart,
    How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee
    O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the woods,
    How often has my spirit turned to thee!

    And now, with gleams of half-extinguish’d thought,
    With many recognitions dim and faint,
    And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
    The picture of the mind revives again:
    While here I stand, not only with the sense
    Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
    That in this moment there is life and food
    For future years. And so I dare to hope
    Though changed, no doubt, from what I was, when first
    I came among these hills; when like a roe
    I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides
    Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
    Wherever nature led; more like a man
    Flying from something that he dreads, than one
    Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
    (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
    And their glad animal movements all gone by,)
    To me was all in all.--I cannot paint
    What then I was. 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: a feeling and a love,
    That had no need of a remoter charm,
    By thought supplied, or any interest
    Unborrowed from the eye.--That time is past,
    And all its aching joys are now no more,
    And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
    Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur: other gifts
    Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
    Abundant recompence. For I have learned
    To look on nature, not as in the hour
    Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
    The still, sad music of humanity,
    Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power
    To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
    A presence that disturbs me with the joy
    Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
    Of something far more deeply interfused,
    Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
    And the round ocean, and the living air,
    And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
    A motion and a spirit, that impels
    All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
    And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
    A lover of the meadows and the woods,
    And mountains; and of all that we behold
    From this green earth; of all the mighty world
    Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,[5]
    And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
    In nature and the language of the sense,
    The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
    The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
    Of all my moral being.

                           Nor, perchance,
    If I were not thus taught, should I the more
    Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
    For thou art with me, here, upon the banks
    Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
    My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch
    The language of my former heart, and read
    My former pleasures in the shooting lights
    Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
    May I behold in thee what I was once,
    My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
    Knowing that Nature never did betray
    The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,
    Through all the years of this our life, to lead
    From joy to joy: for she can so inform
    The mind that is within us, so impress
    With quietness and beauty, and so feed
    With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
    Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
    Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
    The dreary intercourse of daily life,
    Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
    Our chearful faith that all which we behold
    Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
    Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
    And let the misty mountain winds be free
    To blow against thee: and in after years,
    When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
    Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind
    Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
    Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
    For all sweet sounds and harmonies; Oh! then,
    If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
    Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
    Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
    And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance,
    If I should be, where I no more can hear
    Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
    Of past existence, wilt thou then forget
    That on the banks of this delightful stream
    We stood together; and that I, so long
    A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
    Unwearied in that service: rather say
    With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal
    Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
    That after many wanderings, many years
    Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,

Overview

"Tintern Abbey" is a poem about what happens to your relationship with nature as you grow older -- and whether what you lose is compensated by what you gain. Wordsworth returns to the Wye Valley after five years away and discovers that the landscape has changed him more in memory than it did in person. In his youth, nature was a physical ecstasy -- he "bounded o'er the mountains" like a deer, driven by appetite and animal energy. Now, at twenty-eight, he hears "the still, sad music of humanity" in the same landscape. He has lost the raw intensity but gained a deeper, more philosophical perception: "a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused." The poem's structure traces this argument in three movements. First, the landscape itself and the memories it has sustained (lines 1-57). Second, the recognition that his relationship with nature has evolved from sensation to thought, from passion to wisdom (lines 58-111). Third, a turn to his sister Dorothy, in whom he sees his former self, and a prayer that nature will protect her as it has protected him (lines 112-end). The turn to Dorothy is not sentimental decoration; it is essential. Wordsworth needs her as proof that the youthful mode of perception was real, because he can no longer access it himself. What makes this poem enduringly powerful is its honesty about loss. Wordsworth does not pretend that mature perception is simply better than youthful passion. He calls his former joys "aching" and "dizzy" -- intense to the point of pain -- and admits "That time is past, / And all its aching joys are now no more." The compensation he claims ("other gifts / Have followed, for such loss") is presented as a belief, not a certainty: "I would believe." The poem's greatness lies in this willingness to argue for consolation while acknowledging that consolation might not be enough.

Line-by-Line Analysis

Lines 1-22

The opening establishes return. "Five years have passed; five summers, with the length / Of five long winters!" -- the repetition makes the absence feel substantial. Wordsworth catalogs what he sees: cliffs that "connect / The landscape with the quiet of the sky," orchards that "lose themselves" among woods, hedge-rows "hardly hedge-rows" but "little lines / Of sportive wood run wild." Nature here is not manicured but self-willed. "Wreathes of smoke / Sent up, in silence, from among the trees" suggest hidden human presence -- a hermit, perhaps, or "vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods." The landscape contains people but barely; they are absorbed into the natural scene.

Lines 23-49

The first major argument: memory of this place has sustained him through urban life. "In lonely rooms, and mid the din / Of towns and cities, I have owed to them / In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, / Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart." The memories have worked on him physically -- felt in the blood -- not just intellectually. They have influenced "that best portion of a good man's life; / His little, nameless, unremembered acts / Of kindness and of love." The landscape has made him a better person through remembered beauty. Then a higher claim: these memories have given him "that blessed mood" in which "the heavy and the weary weight / Of all this unintelligible world / Is lighten'd" and "we are laid asleep / In body, and become a living soul: / While with an eye made quiet by the power / Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, / We see into the life of things." This is Wordsworth's mystical claim: nature grants access to a reality beneath appearances.

Lines 50-57

A moment of doubt. "If this / Be but a vain belief" -- Wordsworth admits his philosophy might be self-deception. But even if it is, the practical effect has been real: "how oft, / In darkness, and amid the many shapes / Of joyless day-light; when the fretful stir / Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, / Have hung upon the beatings of my heart, / How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee / O sylvan Wye!" The river has been his refuge in memory regardless of whether his metaphysics is correct. This is intellectually honest in a way few philosophical poets manage.

Lines 58-83

The return itself: "with gleams of half-extinguish'd thought, / With many recognitions dim and faint." He does not experience a triumphant homecoming but "a sad perplexity." The place is the same but he is not. He dares to hope that "in this moment there is life and food / For future years" -- this visit will generate new memories to sustain the next absence. Then the comparison: "when first / I came among these hills; when like a roe / I bounded o'er the mountains." His youthful relationship with nature was physical, animal, "more like a man / Flying from something that he dreads, than one / Who sought the thing he loved." This is an extraordinary admission: his youthful love of nature was partly flight from something else, not pure attraction.

Lines 84-111

The compensation argument. "The sounding cataract / Haunted me like a passion" -- nature was once an "appetite," a "feeling and a love / That had no need of a remoter charm, / By thought supplied." Raw sensation was enough. "That time is past, / And all its aching joys are now no more, / And all its dizzy raptures." The loss is acknowledged without qualification. But: "other gifts / Have followed, for such loss, I would believe, / Abundant recompence." He has learned to hear "The still, sad music of humanity" in nature. And he has felt "A presence that disturbs me with the joy / Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused, / Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, / And the round ocean, and the living air, / And the blue sky, and in the mind of man." This "something" is never named -- it is not God exactly, but a force "that impels / All thinking things, all objects of all thought, / And rolls through all things." Nature is the "anchor," "nurse," "guide," and "guardian" of his moral being.

Lines 112-145

The turn to Dorothy. "For thou art with me, here, upon the banks / Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend." In Dorothy's "wild eyes" he reads "The language of my former heart" -- she is still in the youthful mode he has outgrown. "May I behold in thee what I was once, / My dear, dear Sister!" He needs her as a living record of his lost self. His prayer for her is that "Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her" -- nature will lead "From joy to joy" and protect against "evil tongues, / Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men." The prayer extends into the future: when Dorothy's "wild ecstasies shall be matured / Into a sober pleasure," her memory will become "a dwelling-place / For all sweet sounds and harmonies." If pain comes, she will remember this moment and these words.

Lines 146-165

The closing anticipates Wordsworth's own death: "If I should be, where I no more can hear / Thy voice." He asks Dorothy to remember "That on the banks of this delightful stream / We stood together." The poem ends with a restatement of faith: he has come back to these "steep woods and lofty cliffs" not just as a lover of nature but "With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal / Of holier love." The progression from appetite through loss to "holier love" is the poem's entire argument compressed into its final lines. Whether "holier" means religious or simply more mature is deliberately ambiguous.

Themes

• The evolution of our relationship with nature as we age
• Memory as a sustaining force in difficult times
• The compensation of wisdom for the loss of youthful intensity
• Nature as moral teacher and spiritual guide
• The honest acknowledgment of what is lost in growing up
• The role of human connection (Dorothy) in preserving past selves
• A pantheistic or quasi-mystical sense of unity in all things

Literary Devices

Blank Verse

"Five years have passed; five summers, with the length / Of five long winters!" — The poem is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter, the same meter as Milton's Paradise Lost and Shakespeare's plays. This gives the poem a conversational grandeur -- it sounds like elevated speech, not song, which suits its philosophical argument.

Repetition and Intensification

"a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused, / Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, / And the round ocean, and the living air, / And the blue sky, and in the mind of man" — The repeated "and" clauses pile up, each expanding the scope of the "something" Wordsworth feels. The accumulation creates a sense of a force that inhabits everything -- too vast for a single image, requiring a catalog to approximate.

Simile of Youth

"when like a roe / I bounded o'er the mountains" — The comparison to a deer captures both the grace and the unreflective instinct of youthful experience. A roe does not think about why it runs; it simply runs. Wordsworth's former self experienced nature the same way -- without mediation or analysis.

Personification of Nature

"Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her" — Nature becomes a maternal figure -- one who can betray or protect, who leads "From joy to joy." This personification supports the poem's central claim that nature is a moral agent, not just a backdrop, though Wordsworth never quite explains how a non-conscious force can have intentions.

Epistemic Qualification

"I would believe, / Abundant recompence" — Wordsworth does not say "I know" or "there is" but "I would believe." This small phrase transforms the compensation argument from a confident assertion into a willed act of faith, making the poem more honest and more moving.

Apostrophe

"O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the woods, / How often has my spirit turned to thee!" — Addressing the river directly makes it a companion rather than a feature of landscape. The Wye becomes something Wordsworth has a relationship with -- something he turns to in need, like a friend or a god.

Historical Context

Written on July 13, 1798, during a walking tour of the Wye Valley with Dorothy Wordsworth, and published just weeks later as the final poem in Lyrical Ballads -- the collection Wordsworth produced with Samuel Taylor Coleridge that is often cited as the starting point of English Romanticism. Wordsworth had first visited the area in August 1793, during a period of personal crisis: he had just returned from revolutionary France, where he had fathered a child with Annette Vallon, and England was about to go to war with France. The five-year gap between visits spans his transformation from radical political sympathizer to nature-focused philosopher. The poem's title mentions Tintern Abbey, but the ruined medieval monastery is never described in the poem itself -- it sits just downstream, a ghostly presence that frames the meditation on time and loss without ever being addressed directly. Dorothy Wordsworth, the "dear, dear Sister" of the poem, would later develop her own literary reputation through her journals.