“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” 1177In the last pages of the novel, while Lily is
accomplishing her artwork, Mr. Ramsay and his
sons finally take that boat trip to the lighthouse,
which was only planned and never done in section
1 of the novel. This gives To the Lighthouse a circular
narrative structure, since the opening scene involv-
ing James and his joy for the planned trip is here
recalled: The character remembers the feelings of
that day and confirms that they are still present in
his memory. James experiences a double perception
of the lighthouse. On one hand, he perceives its
real image in the present; on the other hand, this
overlaps with the image kept in his memory, show-
ing how in Woolf the process of remembering is
portrayed as taking place in the overlapping of the
past and present.
Teresa Prudente
worDSworTH, wiLLiam “Lines
Composed a Few miles above Tintern
abbey” (1798)
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was an English
romantic poet known for lauding the unspoiled nat-
ural world as opposed to the industrial urban setting.
He was one of many thinkers who reacted strongly
against the incredibly rapid and transformative
social changes that resulted from the Enlightenment
movement and the beginnings of the English Indus-
trial Revolution. One of Wordsworth’s best known
poems on this theme is “Lines Composed a Few
Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks
of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798,” which is
usually referred to simply as “Tintern Abbey.” It is
written in blank verse, meaning that it is composed
in iambic pentameter but does not rhyme.
Although the poem’s two-century-old diction
might present some difficulties to the modern stu-
dent on a first reading, it will soon become clear that
its defined structure presents three distinct themes.
Lines 1–57 speak of the sublime natural beauty the
poet finds on the banks of the River Wye in Wales
and how it restores him to joy and tranquility. Lines
58–111 reflect on the lessons that nature seeks to
teach us about life and how it takes a mature mind
to comprehend them. Finally, Wordsworth addresses
lines 111–159 to his sister Dorothy (who accompa-
nied him on the tour) to express how much he values
her friendship and to insist that their special times
together will live on in her memory even after his
death.
Kelly MacPhailFamILy in “Lines Composed a Few Miles
above Tintern Abbey”
In “Tintern Abbey,” William Wordsworth reflects
on the lessons that nature has taught him about
how best to live his life. He commences his praise-
filled poem about the Welsh countryside surround-
ing the River Wye not through a prosaic description
of the landscape but by detailing the emotions,
expectations, and sense of renewal it invokes. This
description (ll. 1–22) ends with Wordsworth imag-
ining a hermit sitting alone by a fire in the complete
serenity that results from total integration with the
natural world. This image is juxtaposed with that
of Wordsworth himself sitting alone in a room in a
town or city jealously recalling the beauty of nature.
The great difference is that his solitude is said to be
lonely, despite the throngs of people in the urban
setting, while the hermit, with fewer companions,
feels no lack. From this realization, Wordsworth
comes to appreciate the importance of the gift of
intimate and true friendship that lightens our bur-
dens in a world that is all too often impossible to
comprehend.
The supreme such friendship for William Word-
sworth is between himself and his sister, Dorothy.
After cataloging the lessons of nature, Wordsworth
directly addresses his sister in the poem’s third sec-
tion and insists that even without nature, he would
have learned much from Dorothy, whom he calls
“my dearest Friend, / My dear, dear Friend” (ll.
115–116). Although he had three brothers, Dorothy
was Wordsworth’s only sister. They were always very
close, though they spent some years apart when their
parents died and the young children were separated.
After being reunited, they were inseparable, and
Dorothy lived with her elder brother even after he
married. Dorothy was therefore present during the
period of Wordsworth’s greatest literary output and
collaboration with other romantic poets such as
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Dorothy herself began to
write and is best known for her Grasmere Journal