Romanticism in Brief:

Romanticism, attitude or intellectual orientation that characterized many

works of literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism,
and historiography in Western civilization over a period from the late 18th
to the mid-19th century. Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the
precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that
typified Classicism in general and late 18th-century Neoclassicism in
particular. It was also to some extent a reaction against
the Enlightenment and against 18th-century rationalism and physical
materialism in general. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the
subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the
emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental.
Among the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism were the following: a
deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature; a general exaltation of
emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect; a turning in upon the
self and a heightened examination of human personality and its moods and
mental potentialities; a preoccupation with the genius, the hero, and the
exceptional figure in general, and a focus on his passions and inner
struggles; a new view of the artist as a supremely individual creator, whose
creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and
traditional procedures; an emphasis upon imagination as a gateway
to transcendent experience and spiritual truth; an obsessive interest in
folk culture, national and ethnic cultural origins, and the medieval era; and
a predilection for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the weird, the
occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the satanic.

Now we are going with the first poem in this course by William
Wordsworth.
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the
Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
BY W ILL IAM W ORDSW ORTH

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

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

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—
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!

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

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

Before we start explaining the poem, we should highlight some important ideas
concerning Romantics Movement. As we have already mentioned, the publication of
Lyrical Ballads represents a landmark in English poetry. It is different from
everything that had come before it, and it paved the way for everything that came
after. According to Romantic poets, poetry is nothing but a “spontaneous overflow of
emotions”. According to Wordsworth and Coleridge, Poetry should be written in the
simple language of the common people, telling concrete stories of their lives.
Therefore, poetry is originated in “emotions recollected in a state of tranquility”. We
can say that it is subjective poetry in contrast to the objective classical poetry.
This poem is usually referred to by critics as “Tintern Abby”. The long title of the
poem clarifies Wordsworth definition of poetry in terms of language simplicity. The
poem is very simple, and the poet has known the place “Tintern Abby” since he was a
child, and it is a real place. It is a very beautiful abbey in the English countryside with
a gorgeous beautiful garden around it. The poet lived in this place when he was a
child. He left England for five years during which he went to France after the
revolution. He was fascinated by the revolution, and he went to see what happened
there, and he was disappointed by some of the results he witnessed.
He was disappointed because the result was nothing more than substituting a tyrant by
another. He felt sad because the time and experience didn’t change the consciousness
of the French.
He comes back changed by that experience, and he looks at the “Tintern Abby” and
he sees that it hasn’t changed. However, it is "man" who has changed. And this is the
main topic of the poem.

If we read the first stanza we will see that the state of mind of the speaker here is
introspective, a self-examining and thought of inner feelings compared with the outer
world. He is reviewing past events.

The poem we read is called “Tintern Abbey”. Originally it was entitled "Lines
composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, Revisiting the Banks of the Wye
During a Tour. July 13, 1798.]"

The very title of the poem carries Wordsworth definition of poetry. Look at the word
revisiting, this means that he visited the Abbey twice, but he didn’t write the poem
upon his first visit but upon the second one.

The poem is very simple. The poet has known this place, “Tintern Abbey” since he
was a child, and it is a real place. It is a beautiful abbey in the English countryside
with its gorgeous beautiful garden around it. The poet visited this place when he was a
child. He left England for five years during which he went to France after the
revolution. He was fascinated by the revolution, and he went to see what happened in
France after the revolution, but some of things that he saw there disappointed him. He
saw man was repeating the same mistake i.e. substituting one tyrant by another. He
was disappointed because time and experience didn’t change the consciousness of the
French. He comes back changed by that experience, and he looks at the Tintern
Abbey and sees that it “has not changed”; however, it is man who has changed, and
this is the topic of the poem.
Paraphrasing:
It is obvious that it is springtime because there is an emphasis on the
greenness of the scene, and actually, what he highlights in this particular
stanza is the passage of time. He is expressing the span of five years.
“Five summers … five long winters”. He is stressing the ticking of one’s
own clock of life. Now he comes again to see the scene is perfect! It is as
beautiful as ever, and as green as ever, and it is an invitation of man to
have a closer look at nature and enjoy its beauty. Moreover, it is an
invitation for man to be with one’s self and to reflect upon one’s own
life and its meaning and significance. “Hermit” here stands for anyone
who introspect and meditate about the world. Hermits usually isolate
themselves from human company and go to live in a natural place like
mountains and hills.
Now after the description of the beautiful scene, the poet talks about
what happened during those five years; let us read:

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,

Between my prior experience and this one, I have remembered this

scene continually. I have remembered this scene of pure green
springtime, nature in moments of weariness and loneliness, in small
rooms and far away cities (when I was in France). I owe these scenes
sweet sensations and nice feelings. I remember them in hard times, they
were to me like a cure, like some sort of therapy; they have given me
reason to go on, and they were not just passing sensations. They were
sensations that deep in the mind and heart.

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:

These feelings were not passing ones. They went through my veins, to
my heart, to my mind. They are pure sweet feelings, which offered
happiness during hard times.
In these lines, the poet refers to his theory about the way the human
mind functions. He is also talking about the effect of nature on us. When
he remembers this natural landscape, he feels sweet sensations and
feelings in his heart. Although the very experience of standing near
Tintern Abbey and the river of Wye is over and something of the past,
they still preserve their effect on his mind in times of weariness and
loneliness. Therefore, the very experience is coming to his “purer mind”,
his consciousness.
This fascination of natural world is a characteristic of Romantic poetry.
Nature has positive effect on man.
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.

What is the best portion of our life? It is our childhood or as Wordsworth

refers to it “the perfect ideal” stage of our life, so when he remembers
this gorgeous natural landscape, he the very memory of nature triggers
the child in him. Our childhood memories fade, and what remain are the
feelings of pleasure. They are little because they are childish, “nameless”
and “unremembered” because the very experience is lost in the
unconsciousness.
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:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

So nature enables us to cope with harsh realities of life. The industrial

revolution had negative effects on life in England, so nature became the
only solace and escape. Nature has a sublime effect on man.
The poet moved to talk about death. He is talking about the separation
of the body from the soul. The body this entire existence is a “mystery”
and “unintelligible”. This life becomes lighter when we have that serene
mood that is prompted by nature. So nature enables us to go on in this
life until we depart this physical life into the lightened spiritual one.
There is a very important image in this stanza. “Corporeal frame”. It
means that our bodies are nothing but a lifeless form, and the soul is
more sublime. Our physical existence suspends, and we live spiritually.
Therefore, it is the suspension of the physical world and the launch of
the spiritual one. It is the moment of realization of human mortality that
makes us see into “the life of things”.

While with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things. When the eyes of the dead become quite, this quietness
is because of the harmony and the deep power of joy.

—That time is past,

And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures.

So his childhood and its joys and pleasures are gone. He describes them
as painful because they cannot be restored again. He lost them forever
because time is running and he is approaching death. The reference here
is on the effect of the passage of time on us. Time makes us lose our
lovely experiences. However, time cannot take the lovely experience or
the sweet memories. We can remember the past sweet times and
restore the happy feelings.

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.

The poet here states that he is not moaning or crying the loss of the
childhood. He is not complaining to go back to that stage, or he wishes
to recapture it because other gifts have been bestowed upon him. If he
lost the innocence of the child, he will not complain about that because
he has taken something more valuable.

“The still sad music of humanity” This music is sweet and pleasant, but at the
same time it is sad, and it is almost changing; in the sense that nothing
new happens. It is nothing but a repeated act. It repeats itself in the
human existence. That is an abundant recompense. That is the great
reward that is changing the innocence of childhood into something else.
Therefore, he attempts to understand that things might be the opposite
of what they appear to be. Nature is not simply a river, tree or rock; and
life is not simply about biological existence. Life is about the human
condition, which is the sad music we have to listen to.

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. 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!

Now he is saying that he can hear his sister’s voice, enjoying being with
her. This makes him remember his past and his childhood. However,
when he can no more hear Dorothy’s voice, when he goes beyond this
experience into something else, he will not remember his experience.
When he goes beyond this experience, neither hearing her voice nor
looking at her eyes will make him remember his experience.

Wilt thou then forget

That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together;

He doesn’t think that she will forget that they both came here. At least
he hopes she will not forget that.

and that I, so long

A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Again, we have a kind of adoration to nature. Not only in Wordsworth
poetry, nature a very important element in Romantic and modern
poetry.

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!

Nature functions here as a trigger of emotions and feelings, just as

something that motivates his mind to work and think about what is
really important. What he has come up with eventually, even as an
adorer of nature, is that no matter what the meaning he can find in
nature, no matter what happiness nature will give him whether as a
child whose experience is based on visual or physical limitations, or as an
older person whose experience is boarder, nature will not give him what
love of humanity embodied as the symbol of his sister will give him. This
kind of love will give him immortality through the continuity of his name
after his death.
Some figures of speech in the poem:
The use of anaphora in the first stanza; the repetition of the sound /f/ in
Five years… Five summers… five long winters. The repetition of this
sound gives the poem a kind of spirituality in its music.
He uses personification more than once; Waters ... does not murmur. As
if the water were a person who can speak and murmur.
We can find other figures of speech in the poem, but we have to devices
as examples.
Concerning the form of the poem, the poem is written in blank verse
which is a name to describe unrhymed lines in Iambic pentameter. It
consists of five stanzas.
We should always remember that Romantic poets made a kind of
revolution in poetry in terms of form, content and topics. They were not
satisfied with the status quo of poetry and literature at their time, and
they called for renovation of poetry in particular and literature in
general. They succeeded in that, and they invented new genres and
forms. As we have already mentioned the publication of the Lyrical
Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge is the first step in this renewal,
and it was written in an untraditional style and form.