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Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

by William Wordsworth

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Student Question

Is "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" about nature, human nature, or both?

The poem can be found at this link: http://www.nexuslearning.net/books/Elements_of_Lit_Course6/The_%20Romantic_Period/collection%208/Lines%20Composed%20a%20Few%20Miles%20Above%20Tintern%20Abbey.htm

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The poem "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" explores both nature and human nature. It delves into the individual's potential to have transcendent experiences with nature and the ability to recall these experiences through memory. The speaker reflects on how youthful, visceral encounters with nature evolve into more profound, contemplative interactions as one ages. Wordsworth emphasizes the interconnectedness of nature and imagination, hoping his sister will also find peace through nature's memories.

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"Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" is about nature. It is more precisely about the individual's (or the poet's) potential (could call it the potential in human nature) to have a transcendent experience with nature (to "see into the life of things") and then to recall that experience in memory. Through the experience and/or the memory of the experience, the individual can put himself in a more peaceful or joyful state of mind. 

While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. (62-65)

The speaker enjoys the present experience and foresees a time later in life when he will be nostalgic for this moment, will remember, and the memory will provide a similar feeling. However, the speaker knows he will change over that time, so he wonders...

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how those changes will affect his perceptions. 

He indicates that, as a younger man, his experiences with nature were visceral, relating more to feeling and empirical experiences involving the senses. "Their colours and their forms, were then to me / An Appetite; a feeling and a love," and these "had no need of a remoter charm." 

The speaker notes that this way of experiencing nature has passed. Rather than mourn the loss of this way of experiencing nature, the speaker is glad that, as an older man, he is more thoughtful. He becomes more profound and in contemplating the metaphors of peace and tranquility in nature and the human mind, the speaker is more aware of how "deeply interfused" these notions of nature and imagination are. 

Wordsworth (the speaker) concludes the poem with the hopes that his sister will come to have the same ability to recall experiences with nature. Especially in troubling times, he hopes that these recollections will be like a transition to a peaceful, meditative state: 

                             and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; 
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