Tintern Abbey as a Philosophical Poem. Does the Philosophy Overwhelm the Poetry? Tintern Abbey analysis
Wordsworth’s poem, Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, popularly called Tintern Abbey, besides being an ‘elevated’ poem contains a perceptible philosophical note. Wordsworth (born in 1770), as he himself says, composed the poem on 13th July 1798 under powerful inspiration produced in his mind by his second visit to the place : “I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye and concluded it just as I was leaving Bristol in the evening after a ramble of four or five days with my sister. Not a line of it was, not any part of it, written down till I reached Bristol”. The Tintern Abbey, a monastery, founded in 12th century but now in ruins, stands ten miles above the confluence of the Wye and the Severn. The place Wordsworth visited was a few miles above the confluence, which he visited first in 1793, five years earlier. As the poet himself announces, the poem is the spontaneous expression of a powerful feeling, though it did not take its origin in emotions recollected in tranquillity. While every line of the poem bears the insignia of high poetry, the conspicuous philosophical note contained in it, sublimates the poetry and makes it a grand poem far superior to an ordinary lyric or a descriptive, or a narrative poem, autobiographical or not.
The poem can be divided into three parts – the introduction, contemplation and the conclusion. The poet begins with an exclamation charming enough owing to the repetitive use of the word ‘five’ three times. “Five years have past; five summers, with the length / Of five long winters!” The poetic effect is immediately intensified by the poet’s statement that he hears now, as he did during the first visit in 1793, the waters, rolling from their mountain-springs and creating a soft inland murmur. The description of the natural environs is lofty, the mountainous setting made up of the steep and lofty cliffs that connect ‘the landscape with the quiet of the sky’. The poet ,as he reposes under the dark sycamore, views the plots of cottage-ground, the orchard-tufts, which, with unripe fruits, harmoniously mingle with the greenery, composed of groves and copses. The poet views with delight hedgerows which to him appear like little lines of sportive wood run wild. The sportive wood is a transferred epithet indicating the sportive mood of the poet at the gleeful sight of the hedgerows.
While the scene contains pastoral farms green to the very door, the poet also comes to see wreaths of smoke spiralling up from among the trees where the homeless vagrants might have built shelters or where a hermit sits by ‘his fire’ alone and contemplates. These beauteous forms, as the poet says in the beginning of the second stanza, do not attract the poet for their physical beauty alone, but the poet values them because, during the past five years, amid the din of towns and cities and in his private hours of weariness, the memory of his first visit to the place gave him ‘sensations sweet’ – the sensations that he felt in his blood and in his heart, that passed even into his ‘purer mind’ and restored him his lost tranquillity. The poem is marked by a mystical note that strikes us first by the poet’s mention of a hermit lost in contemplation in a wild, secluded place that induces thoughts of far more deep seclusion. Be it mysticism or something else, the philosophical character of the poem is conspicuous (distinct) in the opening stanza and in the first few lines of the second.
Wordsworth’s philosophy as we come across in Tintern Abbey consists in his attitude towards Nature and man. Nature has been the pleasure garden of Wordsworth ever since his childhood when he found delight in glad animal movements, when ‘like a roe he bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides of the deep rivers, and the lonely lakes wherever Nature lead’. This was the time when he found delight in ‘the coarser pleasures’ in physical contact with nature, the delight that a healthy boy feels being free in the open air. At that time Nature to him was all in all. The sounding cataract haunted him like a passion, the tall rock, the mountain, the deep and the gloomy wood, their colours and their forms were then to him an appetite. This is the period when Wordsworth, like Keats, enjoyed to the full the sensuous pleasures that Nature afforded. At that time, Nature had not yet made him contemplative, and so the poet did not discover a source of pleasure beyond what his mortal eyes could present. His feeling for nature was one of love; it was an emotional involvement. This was a time when Wordsworth felt ‘aching joys and dizzy raptures. The expressions are identical with Keats’s: ‘My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains/ My sense as though of hemlock I had drunk…”.
This stage of sensuousness soon gave way to more refined feeling. He is no longer the thoughtless youth avidly filling his appetite for sensuous pleasures, but Nature has sobered his mind so that he can now feel ‘the still, sad music of humanity.’ This experience, achieved while growing, is purely the product of contemplation and very clearly indicates that the poet’s reflective power has broadened and he now dwells on the universal lot of humanity that ‘is full of natural sorrow, loss or pain.’ This is what is called in German Weltschmerz or what Virgil calls lacrimae rerum. (tears in all things – Matthew Arnold).The poet’s experience is neither harsh, nor grating ; yet powerful enough to chasten and subdue one’s mind that, then, becomes capable of deeper contemplation. This state of the poet’s reflective mind, already chastened and subdued by Nature, passes into a state of metaphysical or mystical realisation when the poet feels ‘a joy of elevated thoughts’ and ‘a sense sublime of something far more deeply
interfused’ with the spirit of Nature. This ‘something’ that is far more deeply ‘interfused’ is the spirit 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. This ‘something far more deeply interfused’ is a motion and a spirit that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thoughts and rolls through all things. Thus Wordsworth in the third stage of his attitude towards Nature realises, by the dint of a meditative mind the harmony between man and nature, because the spirit that dwells, among other things, in the light of the setting suns also dwells in the mind of man. This is Wordsworth’s pantheistic philosophy that believes God as immanent in and transcendent from this universe. As the poet’s mind is filled with elevated thoughts and a sense sublime, he openly declares himself as a lover of nature, of the meadows, woods and mountains, of all that is green on the earth, of the mighty world of sights and sounds. The poet announces that his love of nature is induced by not what he sees with his physical eyes alone but with his ‘inward eye’ too. This is expressed as ‘Both they (eye and ear) half create,/ And what perceive.’ At this condition of his mind, the poet admits of Nature as the ‘anchor of his purest thoughts, the nurse / The guide, the guardian of his heart and the soul of all his moral being.’ And it is this spirit that prompted the poet turn into a ‘good’ man and encouraged him to do for the benefit of his kindred beings ‘little, nameless, unremembered, acts of sympathy and of love.’
This stage of contemplation when the poet has elevated thoughts that give him a knowledge of a motion and a spirit that permeates not the world of nature only but also the mind of man, takes him farther ahead into the stage of mystical realisation of the ‘motion and the spirit’ that impels all thinking things , all objects of all thoughts and rolls through all things. Nature also gifted him with ‘an aspect more sublime – the blessed mood, when one is free from ‘the heavy and weary weight of all this unintelligible world is lightened’, when even the breathing is suspended and the motion of the blood stops, when one becomes a living soul.’ This state is called trance or Samadhi. It is a known story that Prof. Hastie asked Swami Vivekananda to go to Daksineshwar, meet Sri Ramakrishna and see for himself what that state actually is. In this state, one discovers the basic harmony of the existence, and one is able to see into the life of things. This is what the Gita says:
O Arjuna, God dwells in the hearts of all.
Thus we see that Tintern Abbey is a philosophical poem of the most superior kind. This is the poet’s mini autobiography, a picture of the gradual progression of his attitude towards Nature that inspires him with empathy with the whole of the mankind, to feel the ‘still, sad, music of humanity’, and undertake ‘little, nameless, unremembered, acts of sympathy and of love.’ Finally, Nature endows him with an eye to realise the cosmic harmony, to see into the life of things. While this mystical philosophy forms the spirit of the poem, poetry of highest quality charms the reader at very step. The poetry is evident in theme, in the diction, in the imagery, particularly in the first stanza, and above all in the Miltonic blank verse. The poet bares his soul, and as he composed the whole of the poem in his mind, before putting the pen to paper, the poem has been a meditative exercise. This exercise also enhances the dignity of the poem and its grandeur, adds solemnity to it and the poem turns out to be a splendid manifesto of the poet’s attitude towards Nature as much as of the spiritual growth of his mind. Tintern Abbey is the summary of The Prelude or The Prelude is the expanded form of this poem.
It sounds quite appropriate when the poet calls himself a lover of nature – the meadows and the woods, and the mountains; and all that he sees on this green earth; of all the mighty world of eye and ear. The poet loves nature as much for what he sees and hears with his mortal eyes and ‘sensual ears’ as for what his imagination supplements. So he proclaims that nature is the anchor of his purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of his heart, and the soul of all his moral being.
The poet is not only a lover a lover of nature for what nature has gifted him with, shaping his mind gradually into that of a mystic who enjoys trance and who discovers the presence of a single spirit in all things including the mind of man. The poet finally proclaims that he is a worshipper of nature who came to visit the place unwearied ‘in that service’ of worshipping Nature with warmer love. The poet adds that this expression that he came to visit the place with warmer love to worship Nature would be inadequate; it would be better to say that he came on his mission ‘with far deeper zeal of holier love’. Wordsworth turns emotional and says in the third section of the poem that “ …Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her…” He gratefully acknowledges that that through all their life Nature has led them from joy to joy by informing their mind with quietness and beauty and feeding it with lofty thoughts so deeply and impressively that neither evil tongues, rash judgments nor the sneers of selfish men, nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all the dreary (tedious) intercourse of daily life can ever agitate them or disturb their cheerful faith that all that they behold is full of blessings.” This faith of the poet in Nature and his gratitude for her blessings is not of an ordinary man; they are the outpourings of a devoted soul. It should be taken into account that while expressing his gratitude to Nature, the poet refers to the sneers of the selfish men and unkind greetings of crooked men which could not affect the poet’s mind as Nature had insulated their mind with steady quietness and joy.
It would not be out of place to say a few words about Wordsworth’s attitude to nature vis-a-vis Thomas Hardy’s. To Hardy, nature is a malevolent force, the symbol of the gods that like wanton boys kill us for their sport. To Wordsworth, it is a benevolent entity that soothes the care-stricken man, gives him peace, offers him solace, raises the level of his mind and stabilises it, and ultimately fills his mind and heart with divine bliss.
A very pertinent question arises as whether the philosophy as discernible in Tintern Abbey has affected the quality of poetry. Philosophy, as is commonly believed, involves the study and meaning of the universe and human life and about the riddle of creation. It also involves the question how a created being is related to the creator, what the nature of the creator is and what our final destination is. The various complexities of life, the many miseries that afflict the human soul also irk the philosophers who engage in quest for the cause and remedy of this eternal mystery. This simple definition of philosophy is enough for us as we are dealing with the issue of the relationship between poetry and philosophy in Tintern Abbey.
Tintern Abbey, since its publication, has always been acclaimed as a poetic marvel. A poem cannot be created without some subject matter, as, otherwise it would become Sukumar Ray’s nonsense rhymes. A serious poet that Wordsworth was, ever since his boyhood in course of maturing years, remained in close contact with nature, and nature gradually shaped his mind. How this process took place is enumerated in the poem. In his boyhood and early youth, he enjoyed the coarser pleasures derived from nature through glad animal movements. The tall rock, the mountain, the deep and gloomy wood were to them an appetite. As he grew older this phase died out, and with a spirit moulded by nature he felt the still sad music of humanity. Wordsworth is now not a man with a separate entity but an individual who feels akin to the whole humanity. Although the dizzy raptures of the youth are no more, the poet has made other gains. As nature has chastened and subdued his ‘thoughtless youth’ he feels the still sad music of humanity. In place of the aching joys and dizzy raptures, with a mind softly moulded by nature, he has felt a presence that fills (disturbs) his mind with elevated thoughts, and informs it with the sense of a sublime spirit ‘whose dwelling is the light of the setting suns, / And the round ocean and the living air, / And the blue sky and in the mind of man.’ This sublime spirit is ‘a motion and a spirit, that impels / All thinking things, all objects of all thought / And rolls through all things.’ Here again, the lower self of the poet merges with the Supreme Self and this is why he perceives that the spirit that dwells outside human bodies also dwells in the mind of man. Wordsworth describes the omnipresent entity as ‘a motion and a spirit that impels / All thinking things, all objects of all thought / And rolls through all
things.’ For this reason, he is still an ardent lover of the meadows, and the woods and the mountains, of everything that is green to the very door. Deeply meditative mood gradually overtook the poet’s sober mind and it gave the poet the mystical experience of a trance when in a serene and blessed mood, the breath of the poet’s corporeal frame and even the motion of his human blood is almost suspended. At that stage the body seems asleep and the poet becomes a living soul. This experience invests the poet with an eye, quietened by the power of harmony and the deep power of joy, and he is able to into the life things. In other words the poet reaches a state when he realises the oneness of the whole creation – a state which in Indian philosophy is called Samadhi, a state when individual consciousness merges with the cosmic consciousness. Outside the last stanza where the poet expresses his feelings towards his sister, what is said above constitutes the subject matter of the poem. If the philosophical subject is an important element of the poem, and nobody would dispute it, poetry excels over it. Had the philosophical content of the poem not been composed in this solemn tone, though by the use of common words, we would neither have philosophy nor poetry. Wordsworth has given us both in full measure, and this indicates his artistic mastery. Poetry and philosophy have intermingled to form a fine fabric, and it would not be incorrect to say that of the two elements, poetic appeal is greater.