William Wordsworth** (1770 – 1850)
“. . .I
cannot paint
What then I
was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me
like a passion: the tall rock,
The
mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colors
and their forms, were then to me
An appetite;
a feeling and a love,
That had no
need of a remoter charm,
By thought
supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed
from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching
joys are now no more,
And all its
dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor
mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have
followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant
recompense. For I have learned
To look on
nature, not as in the hour
Of
thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still,
sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh
nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten
and subdue. And I have felt
A presence
that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated
thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something
far more deeply interfused,
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;
A motion and
a spirit, that impels
All thinking
things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls
through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of
the meadows and the woods,
And
mountains; and of all that we behold
From this
green earth; of all the mighty world
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,
the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my
moral being…”
Foot notes:
*To read the
whole poem: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174796
To
read the summary of this poem: http://www.shmoop.com/tintern-abbey/summary.html
**William
Wordsworth:
He was born
in 1770, in Cumberland, England. He attended St John’s College, Cambridge
from 1787 to 1791. He married Mary Hutchinson in 1802 at the age of 32.
He published The
excursion in 1814, followed by The white Doe of Rylstone in
1815, Peter Bell in 1819 and Benjamin the Waggoner in 1817.
He died on
23rd April 1850 at the age of 80 in Rydal Mount, Westmoreland, England.
