Meditative qualities in Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey


Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey” was written by William Wordsworth after a walking tour with his sister in this section of the Welsh Borders. This poem is regarded as a conversion poem with tightly structured blank verse.

The form of nature which involves the readers to go in deep thought and bring relaxation that is called the meditative qualities. In this poem the poet has expressed his memories, natural scenario and beauty in some forms which take the reader into meditation.

“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 “

These lines expressing the flow of time. After five years have passed, five summers, five long winters the poet is back to this place of natural beauty and serenity. But it is still like the past place where he had visited five years ago. The repetition of the word ‘five’ makes the weight of time which has divided the poet from this scene. The following lines develop a clear, visual picture of the scent. It seems that he can see the entirely natural beauties. He can see the hedges around the fields of the people; and he can see wreaths of smoke probably coming from some hermits making fire in their cave. These images are a pure nature and they illustrate a life of the common people in phenomena with the nature.
“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,”

Here the poet speaks to his younger sister. He gives advice about what he has learnt. He says that he can hear the voice of his own youth when he hears her sister’s speak. He is blessed that he can see his own youthful image in her. He says that nature has never betrayed his heart. That is why they had been living from joy to joy. Nature can impress the mind with quietness and beauty. It feed the mind with live thoughts. The man who is in contact with nature he cannot do any crime. So these lines also continue with the same meditation.

“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;”

These ‘beauteous’ forms have always been with him and it is inborn in his mind. This image has been affects his whole being. They were not absent from his mind like form the mind of a man born blind. In hours of weariness, frustration of nature used to make him feel sweet sensations in his very blood. He used to feel it at the level of the heartbeat.
Thus, to Wordsworth nature is a kind of meditation with the other elements as well.

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