Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Symbolism
Analysis of William Wordsworth's Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey William Wordsworth poem 'Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey'; was included as the last item in his Lyrical Ballads. The general meaning of the poem relates to his having lost the inspiration nature provided him in childhood. Nature seems to have made Wordsworth human.The significance of the abbey is Wordsworth's love of nature. Tintern Abbey representes a safe haven for Wordsworth that perhaps symbolizes a everlasting connection that man will share with it's surroundings. Wordsworth would also remember it for bringing out the part of him that makes him a 'A worshipper of Nature'; (Line 153). Five different situations are suggested in "Lines" each divided into separate sections. The first section details the landscape around the abbey, as Wordsworth remembers it from five years ago. The second section describes the five-year lapse between visits to the abbey, during which he has thought often of his experience there. The third section specifies Wordsworth's attempt to use nature to see inside his inner self. The fourth section shows Wordsworth exerting his efforts from the preceding stanza to the landscape, discovering and remembering the refined state of mind the abbey provided him with. In the final section, Wordsworth searches for a means by which he can carry the experiences with him and maintain himself and his love for nature. . In the first stanza, Wordsworth lets you know he is seeing the abbey for a second time by using phrases such as "again I hear," "again do I behold," and "again I see. He describes the natural landscape as unchanged and he describes it in descending order of importance beginning with with the 'lofty cliffs'; (Line 5) dominantly overlooking the abbey. After the cliffs comes the river, , then the forests, and hedgerows of the cottages that once surrounded the abbey but have since been abandoned. After the cottages, is the vagrant hermit who sits alone in his cave, perhaps symbolizing the effects being away from the abbey has had on Wordsworth. Wordsworth professes to "sensations sweet / Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart" (lines 28-29) which the memories of nature can inspire when he is lonely, just as the hermit is lonely. Wordsworth desires nature only because of his separateness, and the more isolated he feels the mor... ... middle of paper ... ...ame more involved with human concerns. He has become more thoughtful and sees nature in the light of those thoughts. He has traded the boundless energy for maturity and the "still, sad music of humanity" (line 92). Wordsworth ends the poem with the fifth stanza, a farewell to the abbey and the inspiration it has given him. He realizes that there may come a time when he may no longer be able to inspire himself with life-changing situations, and that he will not be able to run back to Tintern Abbey to find himself again. He does what he can, though. He will also be able to rely on his sister, who shared these experiences with him and in whose voice "I catch the language of my former heart, and read my former pleasures in the shooting lights of thy wild eyes" (lines 117-120). Eventually even these may fail him, and in the closing lines of the poem he consoles himself that he and his sister will be able to look back fondly and at least remember their shared time together. Works Cited: Wordsworth, William. Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. M. H. Abrams Gen. ed. New York, London: Norton. 2 vols. 1993.
(ll. 19-24) Wordsworth’s famous and simple poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” expresses the Romantic Age’s appreciation for the beauty and truth that can be found in a setting as ordinary as a field of daffodils. With this final stanza, Wordsworth writes of the mind’s ability to carry those memories of nature’s beauty into any setting, whether city or country. His belief in the power of the imagination and the effect it can have on nature, and vice a versa, is evident in most of his work. This small
In Muir’s essay his tone remains calm and happy as he explains the struggles he faced while looking for the Calypso. He talks about the control the Calypso has over him as he states at one point in his essay, “It seems wonderful that so frail and lovely a plant has such power over human hearts.” In this statement Muir is describing to his audience that the Calypso has a strong controller over his feelings because of its beauty. Wordsworth also uses various positive tones when describing his relationship with nature. In Wordsworth's poem he states that his “heart with pleasure fills” at the sight of the daffodils. This statement shows the audience that the sight of the daffodils makes Wordsworth’s heart fill with pleasure and delight as he examines their beauty. The audience is also shown how Wordsworth’s tone changes when he is separated from the daffodils, as it quickly changes from being joyous to being depressing. This quick shift in tone can be seen in the first stanza when Wordsworth says, “I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills,” this statement allows the audience to see that Wordsworth is sad and depressed when he is not accompanied by the daffodils, which shows that Wordsworth has a codependent relationship with
As the poem opens, Wordsworth is standing a few miles above the ruined Tintern Abbey. He states: 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 island murmur.
In “Tintern Abbey”, the poem circles back to the speaker’s past by addressing his “dear Sister! (Wordsworth 121)”, saying, “I behold in thee what I once was (Wordsworth 120)”, from which we can imagine his sister is playing among the trees as he once did during his childhood. He hopes that his value will not fade, but live on through her, and that her memory of it shall also be “a dwelling place / For all sweet sounds and harmonies (Wordsworth 141-142)”, demonstrating a revival of memory that reflects upon nature’s cyclic processes as presented in “Ode to the West Wind”. Wordsworth poem also alludes to the social miseries in urban cities and resulting unrest across Europe around the French revolution as the speaker mourns the loss of his and his sister’s childhood and the change time brings.
Throughout On Reading Wordsworth's Lines on Peele Castle, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley has provided a minor attitude of resentment towards the direction of her attention. More overpoweringly though, is her immeasurable regard of William Wordsworth in terms of poetic hierarchy. It is apparent to her audience that she respects Wordsworth, especially at the height of his career.
Wordsworth visits Tintern Abbey five years ago and it was everything he could have dreamed of. The church is magnificent and the stained glass is one to remember for Wordsworth. He has an experience there that he will never forget in his mind. The walls stood so high and he could never forget the experience and all in all it was so much bigger than anything he had ever seen. Derek Furr says, "Tintern Abbey’s politics of time in fact demonstrates the poet 's historiographic consciousness of and engagement with modernity.” time is such a factor for Wordsworth’s because over time the church begins to disintegrate or grow old. Once he comes back with his sister to Tintern Abbey he sees the place as a whole new place then he did before, but his sister see 's it how he did when he was just a boy his first time. Being away all this time he sees the place in a different light not much like he did when he was
Henry David Thoreau implies that simplicity and nature are valuable to a person’s happiness in “Why I Went to the Woods”. An overall theme used in his work was the connection to one’s spiritual self. Thoreau believed that by being secluded in nature and away from society would allow one to connect with their inner self. Wordsworth and Thoreau imply the same idea that the simple pleasures in life are easily overlooked or ignored. Seeing the true beauty of nature allows oneself to rejuvenate their mentality and desires. When one allows, they can become closer to their spiritual selves. One of William Wordsworth’s popular pieces, “Tintern Abbey”, discusses the beauty and tranquility of nature. Wordsworth believed that when people
Wordsworth begins the journey into "Tintern Abbey" by taking the reader from the height of a mountain stream down into the valley where the poet sits under a sycamore... ... middle of paper ... ... together even after his death. Over two hundred years after it was written, "Tintern Abbey" continues to uphold the essence of William Wordsworth's beliefs and continues to touch the emotions of its readers. Even though, here in the twenty-first century, the term real-world has a connotation of life in the fast-lane, the real world - the natural world - of Wordsworth's time still holds a place of eminence both in literature and in the hearts of its readers.
Several things, major and minor, about this poem may strike the reader as atypical of Wordsworth's work. The very first stanza of the poem gives us only the general setting: "'Tis eight o'clock, -- a clear March night, / The moon is up -- the sky is blue [...]" (ll. 1-2). Wordsworth's poems frequently begin on a more general scale, and narrow in for a few stanzas on a very specific location. Here we are given a sketchy background and left at that.
Primarily in Lines composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey the mortality of creativeness and imagination is expressed by Wordsworth. This is a poem about the beauty of an old cathedral called Tintern Abbey. He hasn’t been there in five years and he brought his sister along. Even though imagination isn’t immortal, there is a way to reclaim it, “That time is past, / and all its aching joys are ...
In “I wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” William Wordsworth accomplishes his ideal of nature by using personification, alliteration, and simile within his poem to convey to the reader how nature’s beauty uplifts his spirits and takes him away from his boring daily routine. Wordsworth relates himself in solidarity to that of a cloud wandering alone, “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1). Comparing the cloud and himself to that of a lonely human in low spirits of isolation, simultaneously the author compares the daffodils he comes across as he “floats on high o’er vales and hills” (line 2) to that of a crowd of people dancing (lines 3-6 and again in 12). Watching and admiring the dancing daffodils as he floats on by relating them to various beauties of
As the poem progresses, the speaker’s attitude changes in (line 26), where he tells us that his mood is lowered. It is here that the speaker presents himself as “a happy child of earth” in (line 31); as once again Wordsworth... ... middle of paper ... ... / Of the unfinished sheepfold may be seen / Besides the boisterous brook of Greenhead Ghyll,” showing the growth of human beings in relative notion to nature.
Wordsworths “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” is his ideas on how he is going to be writing his poetry. In the “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” The Principal Object of the Poems. Humble and Rustic Life (Wordsworth 434) he discusses how in his poems he wants to create a situation in common life and have all different kinds of people relate them to a personal experience they once had in a common language,“ To throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mid in an unsual way; and ,further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing them truly through not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement.” by saying this in this stanza one can directly relate it to how he then writes “Tintern Abbey”. In “Tintern Abbey” Wordsworth uses this imagination to make things like walking through a abbey with your sister can become a magical incident that sends...
The poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth is about the poet’s mental journey in nature where he remembers the daffodils that give him joy when he is lonely and bored. The poet is overwhelmed by nature’s beauty where he thought of it while lying alone on his couch. The poem shows the relationship between nature and the poet, and how nature’s motion and beauty influences the poet’s feelings and behaviors for the good. Moreover, the process that the speaker goes through is recollected that shows that he isolated from society, and is mentally in nature while he is physically lying on his couch. Therefore, William Wordsworth uses figurative language and syntax and form throughout the poem to express to the readers the peace and beauty of nature, and to symbolize the adventures that occurred in his mental journey.
Durrant, Geoffrey. Wordsworth and the Great System, A Study of Wordsworth’s Poetic Universe. Cambridge: University Printing House, 1970.