’Tis Her Privilege

’Tis Her Privilege

Tintern Abbey explores the life of William Wordsworth in relation to nature.  What is fascinating about the poem as a whole is that from the banks of the Wye, and in as short a space as 159 lines, Wordsworth recounts his adolescent days of pure emotional communion with nature (along with the requisite teenage angst and uncertainty and passion) and his adult days of sublimity, and a basic knowledge of a “presence” (94) that is interfused in sunsets, in the ocean, in the sky, in the air, and most importantly, in the mind of man.  But a consequence of this sublime vitality is the weakening of his emotional powers that allowed him to explore nature each day with a fresh sense of awe and discovery in concurrence with “aching joys” (84) and “dizzy raptures” (85).  A useful question is: Does Wordsworth utilize the newly realized, mysterious, permeative presence as a vehicle to see in Dorothy what he once was?  The obvious answer is yes.  His adolescence, which engendered “an appetite; a feeling and a love” (80) within him, certainly must be cherished and missed for its vibrancy and immediacy and novelty and, even, charity.  Yes, charity, for Wordsworth was an orphan and nature became his parent.  Wordsworth, then, carries two kinds of memories: in an acute sense, those memories of nature that made an indelible imprint on his mind (“the steep and lofty cliffs” [5] and “[t]he [h]ermit” [22]), and in a larger sense, the aggregate of all his adolescent pleasures that lie “unremembered” (31), deep in the fugal recesses of his mind.

            But does it not seem selfish that Wordsworth beckons Dorothy every time he wants to see what he once was?  Or is her company necessary to sustain him against the onslaughts and the “dreary intercourse” (131) of daily life?  One of the first things we learn of Dorothy is her inherent quality to remind Wordsworth of what he once was:

           …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.  (116-119)

Wordsworth, in short, is able to see into the life of her; the intimate relationship he shared with nature in his adolescence continually governs his perceptions and actions, even in adulthood.  It is through memories of his feelings at being one with nature that Wordsworth is able to recognize a similar vitality in Dorothy.  Such a recognition immediately reminds Wordsworth of what nature has done for him in the intervening five years (during which period his enthusiasm in the French Revolution and the greater cause of liberty for all people waned greatly).  Dorothy, in a real way, represents that part of Wordsworth unchanged by the sights and sounds of the Revolution.  She is vibrant, mentally and physically.  Daily communion with nature has afforded her the opportunity for perpetual renewal, both in body and spirit.  Wordsworth, on the other hand, has witnessed firsthand scenes of senseless carnage and violent scuffles for power, along the way having an illegitimate child in an apparently loveless relationship (he later marries someone else).

            The uncommon combination of Dorothy and the cherished scenes of his youth triggers in Wordsworth a fructification of sublime proportions.  He realizes what has sustained him throughout his boredom at University and his tribulations abroad; he credits the indelible impressions made on his mind by the awe-inspiring scenes of his youth with saving him from many a sensual inundation in the city:

           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…  (22-28)

So we begin to see that the emotionality of his adolescence reverberates, “unremembered” (31), deep in his soul and subconsciously affects every action he undertakes.  Wordsworth was, then, in his espousal of the early causes for the Revolution and his unabashed admiration for nature, the original hippie.  For him, only through nature can we “see into the life of things [not necessarily people but later on true of all things in Wordsworth’s case]” (49).  Only by growing up in the country can each person arrive at a sense of place and a sense of purpose.

Work Cited

Wordsworth, William.  “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey.”  The 

           Longman Anthology of British Literature Fifth Edition Volume 2A: 

          The Romantics and Their Contemporaries.  Ed. Susan Wolfson and 

          Peter Manning.  Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2012.  429-433.  Print.