“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” Summary

“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” Themes

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  The Restorative Power of Nature

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• 

  Awe and the Sublime

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• 

  Perception, Creativity, and the Imagination

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• 

  Time and Change

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”

• Lines 1-5

  Five years have past; five summers, with the length
  Of five long winters! and again I hear
  These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
  With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
  Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 6-8

  That on a wild secluded scene impress
  Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
  The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 9-14

  The day is come when I again repose
  Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
  These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
  Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
  Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
  'Mid groves and copses.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 14-22

  Once again I see
  These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
  Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
  Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
  Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
  With some uncertain notice, as might seem
  Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
  Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
  The Hermit sits alone.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 23-29

  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;

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 30-36

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 36-47

  Nor less, I trust,
  To them I may have owed another gift,
  Of aspect more sublime; that 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,—
  Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
  And even the motion of our human blood
  Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
  In body, and become a living soul:

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 48-50

  While with an eye made quiet by the power
  Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
  We see into the life of things.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 51-56

  If this
  Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft—
  In darkness and amid the many shapes
  Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
  Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
  Have hung upon the beatings of my heart—

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 57-59

  How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
  O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
           How often has my spirit turned to thee!

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 60-67

     And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
  With many recognitions dim and faint,
  And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
  The picture of the mind revives again:
  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 67-74

  And so I dare to hope,
  Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
  I came among these hills; when like a roe
  I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
  Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
  Wherever nature led: more like a man
  Flying from something that he dreads, than one
  Who sought the thing he loved.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 74-80

  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,

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 81-95

  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. 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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 95-101

  —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:

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 102-104

  A motion and a spirit, that impels
  All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
  And rolls through all things.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 104-113

  Therefore am I still
  A lover of the meadows and the woods
  And mountains; and of all that we behold
  From this green earth; of all the mighty world
  Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
  And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 114-116

  Nor perchance,
  If I were not thus taught, should I the more
  Suffer my genial spirits to decay:

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 117-122

  For thou art with me here upon the banks
  Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
  My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
  The language of my former heart, and read
  My former pleasures in the shooting lights
  Of thy wild eyes.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 122-131

  Oh! yet a little while
  May I behold in thee what I was once,
  My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
  Knowing that Nature never did betray
  The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
  Through all the years of this our life, to lead
  From joy to joy: for she can so inform
  The mind that is within us, so impress
  With quietness and beauty, and so feed
  With lofty thoughts,

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 131-137

  that neither evil tongues,
  Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
  Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
  The dreary intercourse of daily life,
  Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
  Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
  Is full of blessings.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 137-142

  Therefore let the moon
  Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
  And let the misty mountain-winds be free
  To blow against thee: and, in after years,
  When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
  Into a sober pleasure;

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 142-149

  when thy mind
  Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
  Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
  For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
  If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
  Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
  Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
  And these my exhortations!

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 149-158

  Nor, perchance—
  If I should be where I no more can hear
  Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
  Of past existence—wilt thou then forget
  That on the banks of this delightful stream
  We stood together; and that I, so long
  A worshipper of Nature, hither came
  Unwearied in that service: rather say
  With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal
  Of holier love.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 158-162

  Nor wilt thou then forget,
  That after many wanderings, many years
  Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
  And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
  More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!

  

  

  

  

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“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” Symbols

• 

  The Hermit

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  The Mansion

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“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Allusion

  

  

  

  

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• Anaphora

  

  

  

  

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• Apostrophe

  

  

  

  

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• Caesura

  

  

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

  

  

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• Assonance

  

  

  

  

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• Personification

  

  

  

  

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• Simile

  

  

  

  

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• Enjambment

  

  

  

  

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• End-Stopped Line

  

  

  

  

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• Juxtaposition

  

  

  

  

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• Imagery

  

  

  

  

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• Polysyndeton

  

  

  

  

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• Alliteration

  

  

  

  

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“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Tintern Abbey
• Murmur
• Behold
• Lofty
• Seclusion
• Sycamore
• Orchard-tufts
• Clad
• Groves and copses
• Pastoral
• Vagrant
• Hermit
• Forms
• Oft
• Pure
• Sublime
• Burthen
• Unintelligible
• Corporeal
• Fretful
• Sylvan
• Wye
• Roe
• Coarser
• Cataract
• Recompense
• Chasten
• Subdue
• Interfused
• Perceive
• Genial
• Prevail
• Mansion
• Wilt
• Exhortations
• Hither
• Zeal

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” Speaker

“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”

More “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” Resources

• External Resources

  • Visual Depiction of Tintern Abbey — View an 1835 visual depiction of Tintern Abbey by the British artist Samuel Palmer. Like Wordsworth’s poem, this depiction removes evidence of the local people and industry in the area, presenting a Romantic vision of the ruins of the abbey within a natural landscape.

  • Biography of William Wordsworth — Learn more about Wordsworth's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.

  • Facsimile of Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals — View a facsimile of two pages from Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals, and read about an example of how Wordsworth used her imagery and writing in his poems.

  • British Romanticism — Read more about the British Romantic movement at the Poetry Foundation website.

  • Essay about "Tintern Abbey" and Facsimile Images of Lyrical Ballads — Read an article about the poem and view facsimile images of the original Lyrical Ballads, at the British Library.

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