Thursday, May 26, 2011

In "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," explain the difference in the poet's attitude on his first and on his second visit.

It is clear that the poet has changed a lot during the
five year gap since he last visited Tintern Abbey in terms of how he responds to nature
and what he thinks about it. If we look at the poem carefully we see that Wordsworth
describes how, on his first visit, his response to the beauties of nature was much more
passionate and emotional that it is now. Note how he himself describes his intial
reaction to the scene that he revists now:


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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...



Nature thus was
something that invoked a supremely passionate response in the poet, and was like an
appetite in the way that he is described as not being able to get enough of the joys of
nature.


In contrast, his reaction now seems to be far more
philosophical and mature. The poet says that he has exchanged the "aching joys" and
"dizzy raptures" of five years ago with the ability to look upon nature and hear "The
still, sad music of humanity" that somehow gives Wordsworth a transcendent experience
that allows him to see nature as "The anchor of my purest thoughts" and the "soul / Of
all my moral being." This poem points towards the way that Wordsworth has been able to
mature in his response to nature, and now that he looks upon this same momentous view,
nature to him represents a much more transcendent experience that directs Wordsworth's
soul and outloook in life.

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