Felt in the Blood: Lines from "Tintern Abbey"

 

                                These beauteous forms, 

Through a long absence, 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 have no slight or 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 have owed another gift,

 Of aspect more sublime; the blessed mood

 In which the burthen of the mystery,

 In which the heavy and the weary weight

 Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood

 In which the affections gently lead us on…

 .....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,

 Nor 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....

---William Wordsworth

These lines are from two sections of Wordsworth poem known as "Tintern Abbey," but its full title presents a more complete picture: "Lines/Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting The Banks of the Wye During a Tour.  July 13, 1798."  So a common portrait showing Wordsworth at the foot of the Abbey is more than artistic license--it misrepresents what he was seeing.  The "above" is vague: it could mean above in the sense of a place on the river, or from the hills looking down.  It was probably both, so his view was most likely akin to the picture above (although it seems to have been taken in autumn rather than midsummer.)

The first section quoted here refers to Wordsworth's recollection of his first visit, five years before, and the effect it may have had on him, even if he doesn't specifically remember.  The "mystery" he writes about is mainly death, but also "the heavy and weary weight of this unintelligible world."  Wordsworth had been living through political turmoil at the time of the French Revolution and its aftermath in England. Elsewhere in the poem he alludes to smoke: evidence of encroaching industrialization.  The Abbey itself is a ruin, which shelters "vagrant dwellers of the houseless woods"--in other words, the poor and homeless (or houseless) of the time.  Without ignoring these problems, he found solace and inspiration in nature.  "To some degree, therefore, 'Tintern Abbey' presents absorption in natural beauty as a solution to mental, political and social disconnection," according to literary scholar Philip Shaw.

The second section refers to the present, this day in mid July.  He is on a personal walking tour (not an organized tour or a book tour) and finds his appreciation of the landscape deepened. In nature this time he experiences bonding with a "motion and a spirit, that impels/ All thinking things, all objects of all thought..."  It was and remains an extraordinary (and eloquent) statement.  Today we have a better idea of the extent of "all thinking things": by some definitions it includes all animals and plants.  And "all objects of all thoughts" covers the rest of existence, beyond simply human civilization that demands our attention.

Despite rhetorical devices now out of fashion, these extraordinary lines, with their subtle music and bold assertions, stand out in the poetry centered on the experiences of the natural world.