William Wordsworth Michael And Tintern Abbey Essay

, Research Paper

William Wordsworth’s concluding poems of Lyrical Ballads (1798 and 1800) both share distinct views on the concept of Memories and Tradition. They both show the effect that nature has on man, and how one can find solace in the beauty of nature and pass it on to others.

“Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” has been regarded as one of Wordsworth’s most prestigious poems. This poem was written on July 13th 1798, five years after Wordsworths first visit to Tintern Abbey. In the poem the author is recalling the overwhelming feeling of joy he experienced when he had first seen the abbey, and is transferring this feeling to his relationship with his sister Dorothy, who joined him in his revisit of the abbey.

The poem begins with Wordsworth showing the five-year time lapse between the two visits to the abbey.

Five years have past; five summers; with the length

Of five long winters! And again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

With a soft inland murmur.

He expresses how long the five years really are to him, by repeating the word “five” and using a slow, dull rhythm. Then as he concludes the stanza he mentions the waters from the mountain springs “with a soft inland murmur.” This image seems almost refreshing to the reader, and is the first sign of Wordsworth’s escape to nature. He is recreating in his mind the image and sensation of peace in nature. In the next few lines Wordsworth goes on the describe the scene of the abbey as unchanged over the past five years, using the word “again” to emphasize the revisit. Here he describes the rich green landscape and the peacefulness and seclusion of nature.

In line twenty-two Wordsworth begins to describe the lasting value of the scene that he is now once again observing. This scene has comforted Wordsworth in the intervening years spent in the city, and he feels closer to both man and nature as he is standing there observing the “beauteous forms.” It seems to the reader that this sight created a mood of deep intellectual thought in the mind of Wordsworth and that he frequently turned to this thought to escape the troubles of everyday life.

Around line sixty the author begins to recollect his experience when he first visited the abbey as a young man.

… 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; …

Here Wordsworth shows the terror he sees in nature as a young man. Not only is this his vision of nature, but a vision of the complex and mysterious world in which he lives everyday. This idea becomes very important towards then end of the poem when Wordsworth describes how his relationship with nature has grown over the five-year stretch.

The following lines then describe how Wordsworth has “learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth” (lines 88-89) He now realizes that there is no fear in nature and that nature itself should be cherished. This is the first time the author makes the connection between nature and human needs. He realizes that the mind is stimulated by the outside world, but that the mind also creates its own world from memory and imagination.

In the remaining lines of the poem, from one hundred eleven to the end, Wordsworth shows how this view of the abbey is affecting his sister. He sees the same joy in Dorothy that he himself felt years earlier, and knows that she will benefit from the compassion and love that nature has. In her “wild eyes” he sees his own love for nature which, over the years, has become deeper yet less passionate.

Nor wilt thou then forget

That after many wanderings, many years

Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,

And this green pastoral landscape, were to me

More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake.

The concluding lines are to be taken as memories for the two, and to show that this memory will live long after the two are separated.

Wordsworth first attempt at a pastoral poem can be seen in “Michael”, the concluding poem of Lyrical Ballads. (1800) A pastoral poem is defined as poem set in idealized, often artificial rural surroundings.

The poem begins with Wordsworth taking us to the mystical place near Greenhead Ghyll, where Michael and his family live. Wordsworth vividly describes the land on which Michael lives, making it seem like paradise. In his description he mentions a “straggling heap of unhewn stones” laying beside the brook, this heap of stones plays a huge role later on in the narrative.

Michael is then described as a shepherd who has worked the land all his life. In the poem his land is very important to him because it has been passed down to him through many generations, and he plans

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