Notes on ISC poetry

Session 2010-11

Authored by RAVI MISHRA

Tintern Abbey
Tintern Abbey has long been regarded as the gospel poem of Wordsworth.
Wordsworth has employed his knowledge and experience of nature to convey to his
readers what he defined to be the presence of God force in everything around us.
The poem is indeed another avowal of pantheism, a belief that the universe and its
creation is the language of God. Wordsworth borrowed the philosophy from the works
of Spinoza, on whom he also wrote one of his earlier poems. Pantheism was
considered heresy in the years of formation of the Christian civilisation as it was
naturalistic and went against the canons of the Church. Wordsworth was attracted to
the philosophy mostly due to his early years in the Lake District as a boy and later
association with the French revolution. His finest expression of it happened only in
the year 1798, the year of publication of the Lyrical Ballads, and in Tintern Abbey, a
poem he wrote on his way to Bristol from the Lake District.
Wordsworth as a poet was the master of the technique of nostalgia and the art of
writing ballads and he makes a fluent use of both in Tintern Abbey. He begins the
poem with a classic reiteration of the time he spent not at Tintern Abbey but away
from it. It has been five years, he tells us that he has been away; five summers, with
the length Of five long winters!, thereby bringing to the attention of the reader his
absence rather than his presence at the place. Five passing years have had these steep
and lofty cliffs
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion;
Wordsworth makes use of his experienced poetic faculty as he pulls the reader
towards an immediate consideration of the message of the poem: the spiritual
understanding of nature. He makes use of his past and present feelings about nature
and its sublime beauty to impart the message of realisation of divine power in it.
In Tintern Abbey, Wordsworths philosophy on the discovery of God Force in nature,
is not the expedient expression of impulsive thought. His belief in poetry as "the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings arising from emotion recollected in
tranquillity" reflects itself in his admiration of nature in Tintern Abbey. Wordsworth
does not state a syllable spontaneously but awaits the confirmation of the nature of his
experience repeatedly for five years before using it as a subject for his poem. He
admires the beauty of the cottage grounds, the orchard tufts that appear to be in deep
green, not yet ready for shedding their ripe fruit and running amuck in the wild mid
groves and copses. The trees manifest themselves as hedge rows if looked upon from
an elevation, as lines of sportive wood run wild. Amid these pastoral farms green to
the very door are spotted wreaths of smoke emitted possibly from the vagrants
dwelling or from the hermits cave where he sits and meditates alone.
It is this silent meditation that the poet seeks in nature as he declares that these forms
have been more than present to him in the period of his absence. Not only have the
forms of nature been alive in the thoughts of the poet but he has extracted from them

sweet sensations in his low and tired phases in the tense life of the city. Nature has
always been the poets anodyne. It has restored the poets consciousness and
enlivened it. It has also been the source of inspiration for the poet to ignore the futile
pressures of civilisation to pursue the so many acts of everyday generosity. By
believing in the acts of kindness and love, Wordsworth reveals his becalmed self to
his readers; he is no longer the impetuous child drawn wildly to the pleasures of
nature (a distinction he later brings out), but has been blessed with an aspect more
sublime and has been able to deal with the burthen of the mystery that so
characterises the world. Nature and language of God has provided him with all the
answers: it has given him the strength to deal with life and society.
There is a glimpse of a spiritual awakening in the experience that the poet has with
nature when he says that he has been able to feel the serene and blessed mood
wherein the physical life becomes inert, and he feels himself to be in blissful harmony
with nature with the power to feel Joy. His inner vision is also awakened. He lies no
more confined to the reading of what his eyes tell him: he has the eye made quiet by
the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy and he can see into the life of
things.
Yet, Wordsworth was always aware of his own limitations as a translator of his own
experience. In the preface to Lyrical Ballads he had declared that poetry had to be an
expression in the language of the common people. His big challenge was to be able to
convey his sublime experience to his readers in plain language. In Tintern Abbey
Wordsworth employs a range of vocabulary to convey what he has been able to feel
but he does not force his opinions on his readers. He asks them to believe in him and
his expressions as he has found solace in the memories of the waters of the Sylvan
Wye, the wanderer through the woods. He tries to feel the ambience of the Wye as
he stands before it and juxtaposes it with how he has felt all along the five years he
has been away. He feels the present pleasure and feels cheerful that his present
moments will lead him to more pleasant experience and memories of the river in
future. Nature for him is the beginning of the final realisation: it is the gateway to his
spiritual liberation. In his youth, the past, when the poet visited the Wye valley, nature
meant nothing more than a means to satisfy his sense organs. In his past, he could lose
himself among the trees as a roe seeks the shelter of the dark woods; he would follow
nature blindly and not see it with the reverential eye. In his present time nature means
a lot more to him than a mere satisfaction of the animal senses. While in his
yesteryears, the poet says
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
Today nature is not only the benevolent benefactor of the sensuous pleasure but a
force manifesting the divine presence of God Force in everything around the poet. As
a result, the poet does not long for the bygone joys and regret the lack of purely
sensuous pleasures, he has been so inspired as to develop his inner vision, which tells
him not to look at nature as in the days of thought less youth, but to discover in it the

constant pains of human life the still sad music of humanity. Nature purifies the
poet of all the pains and disciplines him to feel elevated thoughts and a sense
sublime. It disturbs the poet to feel
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 is Wordsworths pantheism. The poet feels the same presence active and alive in
man, all thinking objects and whatsoever is worth human thought. The poet no
longer is a lover of the meadows to satiate his animal appetite for the beauty of nature.
He explores the intellectual truth in nature and worships it. In nature and the
language of the sense he is able to recognise the presence of the anchor of his purest
thought, the God Force, the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul of all my
moral being.
The last stanza of the poem is apportioned to Dorothy Wordsworth, the poets sister
with whom he shared a very intimate relationship. Much ink has been spilt in the
effort to understand the extent whereto Dorothy was the poets muse; whether or not
that was the case is purely historical, yet there is enough evidence in the poem to tell
us the poets passion for nature and its links with his sister. The poet recompense is
the presence of Dorothy with him. He thanks her for being my dearest Friend, my
dear, dear Friend and helping him realise in her voice, the language of my former
heart. Dorothy has been described to be a young maiden with wild, wild eyes and the
poet wishes that he could see in them his former self. He makes a passionate prayer to
nature for his sister, whom he wants to be blessed and aware of the great healing
powers of nature. As nature never let down any of her devotees, the poet conveys
Dorothy to her charge. He endeavours to instil in her the blessedness of nature; he
prays for moonshine to bathe her solitary walks and the influence of the free flowing
mountain wind on her person. These memories of nature, once they have been
transformed into sober pleasure, will become healing thoughts of tender joy in
Dorothys later years if she needs them in the distressing moments of her life. These
memories of nature will forever keep the sister and the bother bound to each other:
constant company shall not be a requisite for one to think of the other for nature shall
be the guiding light. The poet feels confident that his sister will never lose these
memories, nor his messages and philosophy and will recourse to it in times of need.