Tintern Abbey
...rder and harmony on the scene as he observes it. In this Eden there is of course a tree, the ‘dark sycamore’ under which the poet reposes and from which he views the human scene: The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves ‘Mid groves and corpses. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild : these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees… This passage describes the cottages not as picturesque or Romantic, but as belonging to an order which arises from and merges with the surrounding natural wildness. The ‘orchard-tufts’ are not marked off in obvious separate plots, but are ‘clad in one green hue’, and lose themselves in the surrounding ‘groves and copses.’ Furthermore, the association with greenness here, although the unripeness is involved, is with spring-time freshness, and with peace and rest. In the same way, the hedgerows are not mere neat divisions, but are ‘little lines Of sportive wood run wild.’ The whole picture created is a mode of existence, represented by the cottages, orchards, and hedgerows, balanced between the untamed wildness of nature and the orderly patterns of civilization. Wordsworth is here creating his own version of paradise, a paradise which he can physically enter only at rare intervals, but which he hopes he can inhabit, at least mentally, at his will. The next paragraph asserts that this paradise is one which remains available to him, as the experience of the daffodils remains available, even when he has left the scene itself: Though absent long, These forms of beauty 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 f weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration. In this passage Wordsworth asserts the lasting value of the scene which he is now once again observing. It has not been ‘as is a landscape to a blind man’s eye.’ The ‘beauteous forms’ have preserved him in the loneliness of the city. This memory reminds him of man’s capacity for a harmonious relationship with other men and with the world around him. These are the ‘sensations sweet’ which pass into his mind with ‘tranquil restoration,’ creating a state of joy in which, as Wordsworth believes, a man is more likely to be a kindly and moral person. In the following passage, Wordsworth dwells gratefully and passionately on the freedom which the memory of the Wye has offered him from the ‘fever of the world’: If this Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft- In darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart, How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the wood How often has my spirit turned to thee! The physical state of restlessness and disturbance is vividly enacted in these lines. What has been asserted is that the memory of the Wye offers a hope of a life that is neither a brutish isolation nor the confusion and loneliness of ‘towns and cities.’ It is the world of the senses that Wordsworth accepts as man’s true home, and there is no need to seek for a kingdom in the sky or in an after-life. The affirmation begins with the meadows and proceeds through the woods and mo...