March 3 Concerning Wordsworth's "Lines written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"

Wordsworth further explores his inner psychological workings while “In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind”(Lyrical Ballads 72, L: 3-4). What stood out to me the most was the author’s deep self-reflection between lines 59 and 112 in Tintern Abbey. Five years have passed since Wordsworth was in this location, and a lot has happened in his life since then. In 1793, he was only twenty-three years old, and now he is twenty eight. While thinking up this ballad he realizes, “His life had since taken a considerable turn: he had split with his French lover and their illegitimate daughter, while on a broader note Anglo-French tensions had escalated to such an extent that Britain would declare war later that year”(Wikipedia)¹. After so much turmoil, the unchanged Natural beauty of the abbey must have been more than enough to inspire the concoction of a ballad. During his younger years, he sought the boundlessness of Nature with passion, appetite and rapture.

            After life experiences weighed on Wordsworth, he realized that he had lost something in exchange for something else. He had lost his blank slate, and his overwhelming joy. Now he sits contemplatively and is able to take in the experience of Nature on a psychological level as opposed to a purely instinctual one. I believe he begins to realize the sublimity of the Natural existence of man. Instead of being driven in the picturesque sense to explore the landscape, the author stands in awe of the Natural patterns of night and day, and the interconnectedness of the Natural world. The most psychological part about this section of text rears itself starting on line 107, “Of eye and ear, both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognize In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide…and soul Of all my moral being”(Lyrical Ballads 113, L:107-112). This passage reveals Wordsworth’s ideas on the intimate connection between perception and thought. Humans sense the Natural world around them, and in conjunction with perception we integrate thought and sense in the mind to create our own moral character. These ideas may seem commonplace now that modern psychology is taught at the university level, but Wordsworth was a true pioneer of psychology during the late 1700s. 


1) 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintern_Abbey_(poem)#cite_note-2