TINTERN ABBEY – WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

TINTERN ABBEY – WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

·         What is the full title of the poem? “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey; On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798”.

·         When was the poem written? July 1798 and published as the last poem of Lyrical Ballads, also in 1798.

·         At what age he visited the place? 23, he visited the desolate abbey alone.

·         With whom did he return to the same place? With his sister Dorothy Wordsworth.

·         How was her sister referred to as in the poem? Friend.

·         Does the poem actually take place in the abbey? No.

·         After how many years did he visit again? Five years.

·         How did he view nature? “..anchor of [his] purest thoughts, the nurse,/  the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul / of all my moral being”.

·         In fifth and last stanza, wordsworth addresses his sister Dorothy, calling her both “sister” and “dear friend”.

·         Wordsworth hopes that in future, the power of nature and the memories of himself will stay with Dorothy.

·         The poem’s structure is complex as the freedom of blank verse is used independently as well as the measured rhythm of iambic pentameter (with few exceptions).

·         The flow of the writing has been described as that of waves, accelerating only to stop in the middle of a line (caesura).

·         Although the poem is often referred to simply as “Tintern Abbey”, this is misleading because the poem is actually located “a few miles” away!.

·         At the time the poem was written, Tintern Abbey was already just the ruins of a gothic cathedral a stone shell with no roof, carpeted with grass.

·         In Tintern Abbey Wordsworth cleanly reveals his Mysticism and Pantheism.

·         Tintern Abbey is about revisiting. The banks of wye.

·         Who hears the ‘sad music of humanity’? Wordsworth.

·         How did Wordsworth call himself in Tintern Abbey? Worshipper of Nature.

·         The most famous line of the poem “We are laid asleep in body and become living soul”, “If solitude or fear or pain or grief should be thy portion with what healing thoughts”.

·         The poem ends with the a moving address to the poet’s sister Dorothy.