Student Question
Does the speaker in Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" express regret over lost youth?
Quick answer:
In "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," William Wordsworth does not regret his loss of youth. Instead, he nostalgically appreciates his experiences as a young man at Tintern Abbey and uses them to value what he has gained as an older man. I hope this helps! If anything is unclear or if you have any questions, please post a comment on this blog and I will try my best to answer it.
The speaker in this poem in no way regrets his loss of youth. He praises nature and recalls what joyful experiences he had in the countryside as a youngster. (For a moment we should remember that William Wordsworth was one of the first-generation Romantic poets. He was particularly disenchanted with society's interest in science, while forsaking nature. One theme consistently found in the poetry of the Romantics was the idealization and praise of nature.)
In "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," the speaker returns after five years. And although he has not seen this natural landscape in person, he has kept the memories of this place in his mind—with a vivid recollection of the places he has missed. They have buoyed him up "'mid the din / of towns and cities."
Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a...
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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...
This lets the reader know that in the midst of "civilization," these images have remained. He recalls with clarity his youth, running through the greenery, hearing the waterfall, seeing the colors of nature—how it fed his soul:
For nature then...
...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: a feeling and a love...
The speaker declares that he remembers more of nature than of who he was "back then." However, the speaker is clear that he does not regret the loss of his young years and the pleasure he found in nature then, for he believes he has been more than compensated in other ways because he is older.
That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur: other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth...
The narrator speaks of a deeper appreciation of nature in his "older" years, speaking of things that interfere with inner-peace—the "still, sad music of humanity" has often subdued his spirit, but something that has brought him pleasure as it can only for one older is...
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts...
These thoughts have enabled him to become aware of something greater than the singular elements of nature ("ocean," "air," "sky")—something that run through all things in the world, including people:
...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.
The speaker notes that nature has always been at his center—a part of his human and spiritual essence:
...of all the mighty world...
well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Youth is not what the speaker desires, but nature itself.
In "Tintern Abbey," does the speaker regret his loss of youth?
William Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," is a classic example of Wordsworthian Romanticism. It's also a long and complex poem, so it's perfectly fine to be confused by the subject matter. The most important thing to know about the poem is that it deals with memories of the past, wrestles with nostalgia, and tries to discern the benefits of experienced maturity over passionate youth.
First, some context for the poem: the poem focuses on the speaker's return to a place of great natural beauty that he frequented when he was young. We learn that he has been away for quite some time, presumably living and working in an urban environment, and memories of his bucolic childhood have sustained him throughout this process. Naturally, this leads us to wonder if the speaker regrets his loss of youth. In order to answer this question, it's worth looking at a long quotation from the body of the poem:
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; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, not any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. (76-92)
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