Poem title and Tintern Abbey Initial response to poem:
poet
Wordsworth - Composed in blank verse, which is a name
used to describe unrhymed lines in iambic
Romantic - The harmful effects of the Industrial pentameter. Its style is therefore very fluid
concerns (AO1/3) Revolution and natural; it reads as easily as if it were a
- Poverty/sickness/moral problems prose piece. But of course the poetic structure
in the 19th century. is tightly constructed; Wordsworth’s slight
variations on the stresses of iambic rhythms
- French Revolution is remarkable. Lines such as “Here, under this
- Political instability dark sycamore, and view” do not quite
conform to the stress-patterns of the metre,
- Democracy but fit into it loosely, helping Wordsworth
approximate the sounds of natural speech
Poet’s - Nature is restorative
without grossly breaking his metre.
message(s)
- Our purity was lost when we left Occasionally, divided lines are used to
(AO1/3)
nature, and so Wordsworth tries to indicate a kind of paragraph break, when the
forge a new connection with it in his poet changes subjects or shifts the focus of
poems. his discourse.
- - About memory
Theme 1 Nature is restorative, the city is bad - The speaker recalls how in ‘hours of
weariness’ he has remembered the time he
(AO2) - tranquil restoration
spent in the poem's beautiful natural setting,
- present pleasure and this has brought him ‘tranquil restoration.’
This suggests that nature is so powerfully
- life and food / For future years restorative that even the memory of it has the
- healing thoughts power to calm and nourish the human soul.
There was a lot of political uncertainty and
- din
- The poem makes clear that urban life is
- lonely difficult for the speaker, who uses words such
as ‘din’, ‘lonely’, ‘dreary’, ‘evil’, and ‘selfish’,
- dreary
suggesting that city life is noisy, tiring,
- evil isolating and even immoral, perhaps due to
the effects of the industrial revolution and the
- selfish poverty experienced by many of the working
- hours of weariness class.
- This current visit gives him ‘present
pleasure’ as well as ‘life and food / For future
years.’ By describing this visit as ‘food’, the
speaker suggests that in the future,
remembering his time in this natural setting
will nourish and support him. The mere
thought of nature, the poem implies, is as
restorative as actual food.
Theme 2 Memory / Time - The speaker admits that in growing older, he
has lost the ‘aching joys’ and ‘dizzy raptures’
(AO2) - Five years have past
that he once experienced, the naïve yet
- Once again exciting emotional highs and lows of youth.
Yet he also praises the ‘abundant
- through a long absence recompense’, or compensation, for this loss.
- the coarser pleasures of my boyish With time, the speaker has learned to ‘look on
days nature’, and to hear the ‘still sad music of
poet
Wordsworth - Composed in blank verse, which is a name
used to describe unrhymed lines in iambic
Romantic - The harmful effects of the Industrial pentameter. Its style is therefore very fluid
concerns (AO1/3) Revolution and natural; it reads as easily as if it were a
- Poverty/sickness/moral problems prose piece. But of course the poetic structure
in the 19th century. is tightly constructed; Wordsworth’s slight
variations on the stresses of iambic rhythms
- French Revolution is remarkable. Lines such as “Here, under this
- Political instability dark sycamore, and view” do not quite
conform to the stress-patterns of the metre,
- Democracy but fit into it loosely, helping Wordsworth
approximate the sounds of natural speech
Poet’s - Nature is restorative
without grossly breaking his metre.
message(s)
- Our purity was lost when we left Occasionally, divided lines are used to
(AO1/3)
nature, and so Wordsworth tries to indicate a kind of paragraph break, when the
forge a new connection with it in his poet changes subjects or shifts the focus of
poems. his discourse.
- - About memory
Theme 1 Nature is restorative, the city is bad - The speaker recalls how in ‘hours of
weariness’ he has remembered the time he
(AO2) - tranquil restoration
spent in the poem's beautiful natural setting,
- present pleasure and this has brought him ‘tranquil restoration.’
This suggests that nature is so powerfully
- life and food / For future years restorative that even the memory of it has the
- healing thoughts power to calm and nourish the human soul.
There was a lot of political uncertainty and
- din
- The poem makes clear that urban life is
- lonely difficult for the speaker, who uses words such
as ‘din’, ‘lonely’, ‘dreary’, ‘evil’, and ‘selfish’,
- dreary
suggesting that city life is noisy, tiring,
- evil isolating and even immoral, perhaps due to
the effects of the industrial revolution and the
- selfish poverty experienced by many of the working
- hours of weariness class.
- This current visit gives him ‘present
pleasure’ as well as ‘life and food / For future
years.’ By describing this visit as ‘food’, the
speaker suggests that in the future,
remembering his time in this natural setting
will nourish and support him. The mere
thought of nature, the poem implies, is as
restorative as actual food.
Theme 2 Memory / Time - The speaker admits that in growing older, he
has lost the ‘aching joys’ and ‘dizzy raptures’
(AO2) - Five years have past
that he once experienced, the naïve yet
- Once again exciting emotional highs and lows of youth.
Yet he also praises the ‘abundant
- through a long absence recompense’, or compensation, for this loss.
- the coarser pleasures of my boyish With time, the speaker has learned to ‘look on
days nature’, and to hear the ‘still sad music of
