Literary Analysis of William Wordsworth's Poem Tintern Abbey

William Wordsworth is regarded as one of the first and most successful romance writers in English literature. He was fond of nature that he would write about religious life in rural areas, and he hated capitalist urban civilization and cold relations under monetarism. Therefore, he lived in seclusion in the Lake area, far away from the city. Hence his surroundings contributed to his title as a Lake Poet. He not only put forward a series of new ideas and propositions in the prologue of Lyric Ballads written by him, but also raised the status of poetry and poet to an unprecedented height with his representative work such as Tintern Abbey, and several other works, to excavate inner world of all mankind, that eventually started the modern poetry style of the 20th century. In this paper, I will discuss the artistic characteristics in his most famous poem, Tintern Abbey. 

Wordsworth believed that poetry must be created in plain and vivid language, and only by rubbing every flower, tree, insect, and animal in the world into the poem can poetry be more abundant and have more tension, and can it reflect the praise and reverence for nature. In the poem, the poet vividly describes the beautiful scenery that the poet experienced when he revisited the Tintern Abbey five years later and the process of psychological change when the beautiful scenery in front of him triggered the poet’s recollection of the changes in the past years. In this poem, the poet combines the elegant and majestic natural scenery with the long-lasting meditation with his unique conception and rich imagination. There is a kind of profound philosophy in the ordinary poems expressing feelings by the scenery, which tends to arouse the readers’ admiration for the nature and the thought, inheritance, and transformation of life.    

Wordsworth used a lot of repetition of words to express strong feelings after the return of the poem 'Tintern Abbey.' Word repetition is a writing technique used by many poets to express strong feelings. Each time the word is repeated, the reader's imagination and attention are focused on each level of the word. The word 'five' is repeated three times in the first few lines of the poem: 'Five years have past; five summers, with the length of five long winters!” The length of time expressed in the poem is the same, but the meaning is completely different. 'Five' is more than just a number. It's a powerful reminder of the past. The poet expresses his feelings about time through simple and simple language. Maybe five years means a lot to the author, maybe sadness, maybe happiness. Therefore, when he looks back on his life, he uses the number 'five' to express that only nature always contains vitality and vitality. The essence of a poem lies in the contradiction and unity between the subjection and objection of the poem, whose factor determining its essence is the poet’s aesthetic ideal and aesthetic emotion. To achieve this, it is important to create a high-level artistic conception. The decisive factor of artistic conception is the perfect combination and sublimation of a typical emotion or a typical image. This typical emotion can resonate only by arousing the readers’ connection through the artistic image provided by the text so that it can be as immersive and aesthetic. Image is the scenario created by imagination or fantasy. It is not imitation, but the artistic image permeated with the poet’s feeling. Wordsworth described a large number of natural images in this poem. Yet the poet did not merely write down a calm and intuitive description, he described a fusion of thoughts and feelings of his love to nature and pursued freedom. The poet gave full play to his imagination, innovated the images of real life, and made them become the original images of blending feelings and scenes. That's where this poem differs from the rest of Wordsworth's poetry. 

Tintern Abbey is Wordsworth's only poem talks about identity. In this poem, Wordsworth finds his lost self in the quiet of nature. But the rest of Wordsworth's poetry was mostly about pure nature.    

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud, written in 1804, is one of Wordsworth's masterpieces of lyricism. It is said that the poem is, according to the poet's brother and sister hang out together, were deeply attracted by the charm of this experience in nature, embodies the poet described poetry should be 'emotion recollected in tranquility”. The whole poem can be divided into two parts; Landscape and lyricism. The poem opens with a somber first-person narrative. The poet tries to capture the obscure information of memory; on the other hand, he feels that he is alone, free to enjoy the beauty endowed by nature. He likens himself to a floating cloud, drifting at will, and imaginative lines suggest a sense of escape from loneliness and freedom. In his memory, the daffodils fluttered like stars in the breeze.    

The first and fourth stanzas of Tintern Abbey describe water, mountain, and stone: The scenery mentioned in the fourth stanza is what seen by the poet five years ago while the scenery mentioned in the first stanza shows the present. At that time, the water in the poet’s eyes was “a soft inland murmur”, which “rolling from their mountain-springs.” While years later, the poet recalled what he saw in the past was 'The sounding cataract”, that “haunted” him. The same water, however, offers a different mood. Five years ago, the perceptual, passionate, and impulsive youth felt that the waterfall has a magical and ineffable power, while five years later, the poet saw a deep and surging river. Two different mindsets create two different images. These images are permeated with the poet’s personal feelings, through which readers can see the most valuable and secret beauty of the poet’s inner strength. Besides, what poet has seen in the past was “the tall rock, / The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood”. The form and color that young poets like were the surfaces of the scenery. It can be seen that the thoughts of the poets at that time were not mature enough, and they were not good at understanding the underlying of the present. The poet selected two words, “deep” and “gloomy” to describe the woods, which not only vividly reflected the mysterious charm of the woods, but also the young poet’s psychological response to his surroundings. Five years later, however, the poet saw another scene:    

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, 

That on a wild secluded scene impress 

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect 

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.     

The poet no longer considered these landscapes as his hobbies, but an organic whole of harmony and dependence. To depict his past, the poet also created an interesting figure, a deer. The poet compared himself to a deer that he would express his personal feelings accurately and lively through the view of a deer.    

When the poet was away from this abbey, whenever the poet was bothered and confused by the secular situation, he would think of the Wye River, the source of his spiritual comfort and thought. The poet’s successful depiction of this image did not depend on the detailed description of the scene of the Wye River, but on how he turned his thoughts to such subject:    

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 – 

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! 

This kind of simple and implicit depiction adds a strong charm to the image of the Wye River and creates a mood of blending feelings and scenes. It gives people strength, makes readers imagine, oversees extraordinary beauty in the ordinary.  

In the last stanza of this poem where after the poet had tasted “the sad music of humanity,” his mind had been purified. He could sense: 

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. 

Here, light, ocean, blue sky, air, and the human spirit are all endowed with the spirit of God. They promote the continuous operation of the subjective thoughts of all things and people in the universe harmoniously. The image created by this unique method is not only unconventional but also providing readers with a broad and beautiful artistic conception, leaving readers with more space to imagine.    

Wordsworth's life experience of traveling in Europe made his understanding of nature more profound and real. The cruelty of the French Revolution further sets off the hustle and bustle of the city, making it difficult for people to get peace of mind. Although this is a revolution for the liberation of human nature, the poet responded with great enthusiasm to support this revolution, but after the baptism of this revolution, the poet believes that people return to nature has no time to delay. In this poem, Tintern Abbey shows the beauty of human nature endowed by nature, the aesthetic taste, the perspective of truth and the influence of morality, and shows the mutual care and influence between human and nature. Wordsworth and his sister swam along the Banks of the river wye, capturing the joys of the past in the shimmering beauty of nature and returning to the poet's heart. The poet integrated himself into nature and considered himself as a part of nature. Recalling the scene when he and his sister went to the river five years ago, he felt his spiritual sublimation and conciseness and understood nature more thoroughly. The beauty of human nature is also the most beautiful part that the poet showed in this poem.