A brief analysis of Tintern Abbey

[delmarstation]

In the poem "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" Wordsworth is trying to recapture a feeling about a part of the countryside that he had visited five years before by re-constructing the memory and tracing it over what he sees on this visit. The feeling he has is one of peace, "The day is come when I again repose" and also one of beauty, "The beauteous forms, through a long absence, have not been to me". He explains that he turns to these memories, "O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer through the woods, how often has my spirit turned to thee" and they have helped him appreciate nature as the years have passed since his last visit. Wordsworth also explaining that nature in its purest forms like the scene he is decribing is free of the evils of humanity, "Nature never did betray". He concludes by stating that the hills were, " More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake", which to him joins his pure thoughts with nature.

[JBI]

Basic - you missed the recasting of the Edenic myth, and the fall from Paradise. He is unable to reconnect with nature in the way he would have liked, but through memory, he is able to recapture his lost wholeness, and channel that into poetry.