UDK 821.111.09-141 Wordsworth W. 
Abstract 
WORDSWORTH'S "TINTERN ABBEY" AND 
THE TRADITION OF THE "HYMNAL'' ODE1 
Sandro lung 
Kurt Schliiter 
InMemoriam 
_De_Spi!e thedaims_for __ simplicity _oflanguagethat _Wordsworth .articulatedin the early-years 
of his literary career, especially in the "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads-his pronounced difference from 
earlier (Neoclassical) poets, poetic practice, and the forms of poetry of the Augustans-he could not 
escape what Waiter J ackson Bate long ago termed the "burden of the past". Words worth's indebtedness 
to his literary forbears is not only ideational but formal as well. The present article aims to examine 
Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" and relate it to the tradition of the hymnal ode used so masterfully by 
William Collins in the mid-century, at the same time reconsidering the generic conceptualisation of the 
poem as an ode in all but name which in its structure and essence re-evokes mid-century hymnal odes 
but which is contextualised within Wordsworth's notion of emotional immediacy and simplicity. 
Wordsworth's "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads claims for "greater simplicity" and the 
representation of "elementary feelings"2 without the "gaudiness and inane phraseology 
of many modern writers"3 are commonly taken to constitute the principal poetics of 
post-Augustan naturalness, emotional immediacy as well as the primitivist originality 
of Rousseauvian Romanticism. According to John F. Danby, Wordsworthian "simplic-
ity is an invitation to a new intimacy, a new discipline, and a new complexity."4 This 
complexity is represented not only in the ideology that Wordsworth's works advocate but 
also in the form that the poet chose to communicate ideas to his readers. In the second 
edition of Lyrical Ballads of 1800, Wordsworth seemed to see the necessity to add an 
1 I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to Professor Frederick Burwick for a critical reading of and 
helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. 
2 Wordsworth, "Preface," 60. The "Preface" will be cited from Michael Mason ed., Lyrical Ballads 
(London and New York: Longman, 1994). 
3 Wordsworth, "Preface," 59. 
4 John F. Danby, The Simple Wordsworth: Studies in the Poems 1797-1807 (London: Routledge and 
Kegan Paul, 1968), 26. 
51 
explanatory note to "Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey. On Revisiting the Banks 
of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798"5: "I have not ventured to call this Poem an Ode; 
but it was written with a hope that in the transitions, and the impassioned music of the 
versification, would be found the principal requisites of that species of composition." 
By negation Wordsworth introduces the generic form ofthe ode, and characterises 
it by means of its typical "transitions" as well as "the impassioned music of the versifica-
tion." Words worth's familiarity with the "species of composition" of the ode reflects his 
reading of the major odes of the mid-century. In the "Preface" he commended Collins 
who, by Romantic poets, was universally associated with the ode and whose rare first 
edition of Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (1746) Wordsworth possessed.6 
In his 1793 "Remembrance of Collins" he imitated the poet's Ode on the Death of Mr. 
Thomson. Clearly, Wordsworth was aware of the (generic and ideational) distinctness 
of "Tintern Abbey"; at the same time, he utilised conventions that were used by Collins 
but modified them significantly in his poem so that - while giving voice to his cult of 
Nature - the classical Hellenism that inspired Collins was no longer discernible. 
Collins's odes had not developed a "religion ofnature"7 as Wordsworth's poems 
did, but he embedded his personifications in a framework of myth that enabled him to 
build, in the form of the ode, a sublime setting in which his speakers invoked the central 
deities of the compositions.8 While Collins invoked emanations of Goddess Natura, 
Wordsworthprovided-a personalised version ofthis all~comprisingdeitywhichwas not 
defined in mythological terms.9 Yet, even Wordsworth attributes a mysticism to Nature 
that Collins saw as an inherent aspect of his deities. 
Wordsworth's association of his poem with the genre of the ode is unavoidable 
since the ode - most prominently since the mid-eighteenth century, and especially 
through the renewed interest in Longinus and John Dennis's treatise on the sublime- is 
a lyric genre that deals with the sublime, the superhuman, supernatural and the divine. 
Collins had already left behind the encomiastic function that seventeenth-century odes 
-especially music odes- had utilised, and Wordsworth does not revive this function, 
either. Kurt Schliiter demonstrated in Die englische Ode: Studien zu ihrer Entwicklung 
unter EinflujJ der antiken Hymne that the structure of Collins 's hymnal odes consisted 
of three distinct parts: (i) the initial invocation of the deity, (ii) the 'pars epica', a nar-
rative part dedicated to providing information (mythological or contextual) on the deity 
and its importance for the speaker, and (iii) a petition, usually, for inspiration. Schliiter 
5 "Tintern Abbey" will be cited from Michael Mason ed., Lyrical Ballads (London and New York: 
Longman, 1994). 
6 This copy is now in the Piermont Morgan Library, New York. Edward Gay Ainsworth Jr, Poor Collins: 
His Life, His Art, and His Influence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1937), 256-59, has examined 
Wordsworth's interest in Collins. See also, Sandro Jung, "William Collins, Wordswoth and Coleridge," 
ANQ, 20 (2007). . 
7 H. W. Piper, The Active Universe: Pantheism and the Concept of Imagination in the English Romantic 
Poets (London: The Athlone Press, 1962), 60. 
8 Gray, on the other hand, in his odes demonstrated encyclopaedic learning, annotation, as well as poetic 
diction, features that are irreconcilable with Wordsworth's aspiration to represent the language and senti-
ments of "common men." 
9 See Sandro Jung, "William Collins and 'Goddess Natura'," special issue on eighteenth-century poetry 
(2006, forthcoming). 
52 
considered the invocation as the most important part, since it established the relation-
ship between speaker and deity; for that reason, he does not consider "Tintern Abbey" 
a hymnal ode, arguing that the ''Art seiner [Wordsworth's] Begegnungen mit dem Got-
tlichen ist wesentlich verschieden von dem Erlebnis der mythischen Schau, obwohl er 
sie gelegentlich rnit den Worte vision bezeichnet.10 He concedes, however, that there are 
"in Words worths besonderer Weise, das Gottliche zu erleben, Ziige, die mit der Darstel-
lung in der bisher bekannten odischen Form in Spannung stehen."11 Groundbreaking 
though it was - and still the best history of the English ode - his study aimed to trace 
the history of the hymnal ode by means of concentrating on the major representatives. 
Recent research, as well as the revision of the poetic canon, reflects a new interest in 
those authors hitherto ignored or neglected. In that respect, it must be acknowledged that 
the hymnal ode lived on after the publication of Collins's and Gray's odes but that the 
strict formula that Schliiter introduced was at times translated into a tripartite structure 
of strophe- antistrophe- epode, while others applied a reductivist poetics and held that 
the hymnal invocation was the only essential component part of the odeP 
In Wordsworth's use of the genre of the ode the Thou-I relationship of traditional 
hymnal odes in which the speaker depreciates his own identity by apostrophising the 
"Thou" is inverted into the Romantic constellation of I-Thou. There are brief invoca-
tions in "Tintern Abbey" of "sylvan Wye" which, however, are integrated in the long 
··contemplative passages· of recollection: 
Wordsworth primarily used the 'pars epica' not to describe the deity but himself 
in order to put into context the lengthy recollections of the speaker's experiences and 
sensations. One of the central topics for Words worth is that of recollection; the sponta-
neous response to the power of Nature that he may have felt when first visiting Tin tern 
Abbey could have been uttered by means of a hymnal apostrophe; recollection, however, 
is a process that has already used the synthesising (inspiring) qualities that a successful 
petition would have conferred on him. Through his central emphasis on recollection, 
therefore, Harold Bloom argues, "Wordsworth so mystifies memory as to make it the 
one great myth of his antimythological poetry,"13 thereby introducing mythic qualities 
that are inherent in the hymnal tradition. In that regard, "Tintern Abbey" "becomes 
more memory than spiritual or imaginative renovation.'' 14 The poem adopts the epic 
features that Pindar's Epinician odes possessed, as well as the modal correlations that 
were introduced in the long poem and will, later in Wordsworth's career, be employed 
in The Prelude.'5 Unlike Pindar or Collins, however, Wordsworth does not represent 
10 Schltiter, Die englische Ode: Studien zu ihrer Entwicklung unter Einfll{/3 der antiken Hymne (Bonn: 
Bouvier, 1964), 182. 
11 Schltiter, Die englische Ode, 181. 
12 See Sandro Jung, "Form versus Manner: The Pindaric Ode and the 'Hymnal' Tradition in the Mid-
Eighteenth Century," LiLi: Zeitschrift fUr Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik (2006), 21-39. 
13 Harold Bloom, "The Scene oflnstruction: TintemAbbey, "Modem Critical Views: William Wonwworth, 
ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 1985), 113. See also, Stuart M. Sperry Jr., "From 
'Tintern Abbey' to the 'Intimations Ode': Wordsworth and the Function of Memory," The Wordsworth 
Circle, 1 (1970), 40-49. 
14 Bloom, "The Scene of Instruction," 116. 
15 See Sandro Jung, The Poetic Fragment in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1660-1830 (Cardiff: University 
of Wales Press, 2007). 
53 
the history of heroes (Pindar) or the aretalogy of his personifications (Collins), but is 
more concerned with a desire to re-narrate his own history, the history of his mental and 
poetic growth. In doing so, the 'pars epica' in "Tintern Abbey" is transformed into an 
autobiographical recollection of his visit to the abbey while at the same time redefining 
the ode as a Romantic lyric genre that no longer requires the superior deity in order 
for the speaker to be granted the petition that is usually the subject of the apostrophe. 
Rather than seeing "Tintern Abbey" as a failed hymnal ode, it represents a decisive 
alternative to the mythological odes of the mid-century; Alastair Fowler, writing about 
genre, insists that generic "features are often characteristic through their absence. " 16 And 
in Wordsworth's poem the striking absence of the invocational petition- the central 
address of the deity - is silently taken for granted and echoed in his mention of Nature 
as his personal guide, guardian and mother, functions that Collins (similarly, if more 
hesitantly) attributed to Goddess Natura in his odes. 
The title mention of Wordsworth's "revisiting the banks of the Wye" indicates 
that his composition draws on the memory of a past visit and combines this - through 
imaginative synthesis- with his present visit to the abbey. The force of "the spontane-
ous overflow of powerful feelings" 17 is translated into durable (and artful) form. His 
technique of recollecting and reconstructing the past through transforming a transient, 
unstable, and fragmented memory of past impressions into a lasting memory that 
functions as the backbone of Wordsworth's (moral) _well-being am:Udentity asa_pm~t 
appears not to be based on a plan other than Wordsworth's immediate response to 
revisiting Tintern Abbey. It is, therefore, an impression of immediacy and spontaneity 
that he wants to create. Wordsworth's imagination does not merely recollect the past, 
but refines both the memory as well as the sensations first experienced. Although, as 
Mary Jacobus argues, the process of recollection concentrates the "beautifully con-
trolled movement of the verse" with the "mood"18 of "tranquil restoration," thereby 
assuming that Words worth only serves as mouthpiece of his imagination, she realises 
at the same time that this process of translating thoughts and memories into writing 
requires some ordering of ideas, associations, connectives and transitions which re-
flect the artistry ofWordsworth's poem. Michael Mason further helpfully reminds the 
reader that "Tintern Abbey" "was not written confronting the scene it describes or even 
'composed' there. [ ... ] The date furnished in the title confirms the Fenwick note, as 
this was the day on which Wordsworth returned with Dorothy from his walking tour 
of the summer of 1798."19 
The "introspective recall" that is so central to Wordsworth's recollection of past 
experience is reflected in his "rhythms of thought- associative exploratory, fluctuat-
ing in and out of the present."20 The poet uses the fragmentary and elusive qualities of 
the ode to bridge the conflict between original experience and recollected experience; 
16 Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1982), 73. 
17 Wordsworth, "Preface," 62. 
18 Mary Jacobus, Tradition and Experiment in Wordsworth 's Lyrical Ballads (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 
1976), 48. 
19 Mason ed., Lyrical Ballads, 205. 
20 Jacobus, Tradition and Experiment, 50. 
54 
this experience, through the process of poetic composition, becomes "durable" and 
"permanent." Steven Knapp is certainly right, in that regard, that the necessity to order 
the elements of memorable experience that constitute the hymnal 'pars epica' can only 
be achieved through reflection, for "only in the tranquil perspective of a later moment 
can the unwarranted excitement of the original experience be recognised as an index of 
the mind's transcendence through illusion of supernatural circumstances."21 Marshall 
Brown reads "Tintern Abbey" in terms of the poet's construction of experiential and 
imaginative growth and, in his reading, traces "an interpretation of empiricism" in which 
"Wordsworth recomposes the genesis of his current maturity."22 
Words worth successfully creates the impression that the reader is tracing his prog-
ress over the five years that have elapsed since the poet's last visit to the abbey. When 
Wordsworth visited Tintern Abbey for the first time, his perception of the environment 
was synchronic, focusing on the individual "spots of time." In order to achieve coherence 
within the 'pars epica' of his odic composition he needs to synthesise these "spots of 
time" by means of an artificial sequence. The diachronic progress of the 'pars epica', 
however, need not necessarily be authentic or logical; rather, it makes use of transitions 
and digressions, elements so characteristic of the ode since Cowley and anticipates 
what F. W. Bateson, dealing with the later poetry of Wordsworth, discusses in terms 
of the egotistical sublime.23 This Wordsworthian "emphasis on the special nature of 
art-activity,"24 despite his centring on his own mental growth, is a prominentfeature of 
Collins's odes, too, where the speaker describes his quest in search of poetic inspiration 
to translate his creative energy into Coleridge's "esemplastic power."25 
The narrated time (erziihlte Zeit) of "Tintern Abbey" comprises five years, which 
are alternately termed "Five years" and "five summers," relating again to Wordsworth's 
personal growth from a rationalist to a devotee of Nature who perceives and understands 
even time only by means of reference to the seasons and natural change. While the 
deity-personifications that are used in the hymnal odes of Collins had been part of the 
mythological machinery for thousands of years, Words worth's experience is not embed-
ded within the mythological context of antiquity but in that of the myth of Nature and 
his desire to be to her prophet. Importantly, and that is further difference to Collins, 
"Wordsworth adds another dimension to the dimensions of space and the dimension of 
time, for he presents the scene to us as interpenetrated with human feeling."26 Rather than 
providing a linear progression of time in the 'pars epica', however, the poet's dealing with 
time appears to be circular, for as Charles Sherry observes, "the landscape remembered 
in bitter times in the city is a restorative; it is a source of freedom from the harshness 
of life, not that it enables him to escape it, but that it prevents him from succumbing to 
21 Steven Knapp, Personification and Sublime. Milton to Coleridge (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 
1985), 108. 
22 Marshall Brown, "Romanticism and Enlightenment," The Cambridge Companion to British Romanti-
cism, ed. Stuart Curran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 40. 
23 F. W. Bateson, Wordsworth: A Re-Interpretation (London, Longmans, 1954, 1965), 150-53. 
24 Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (London: The Hogarth Press, 1983), 36. 
25 See Sandro Jung, "Post-Augustan Nature in William Collins's Ode to Evening (1746)," Philologia, 3 
(2005), 97-106. 
26 Geoffrey Durrant, Wordsworth and the Great System: A Study ofWordsworth 's Poetic Universe (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 88. 
55 
it."27 Yet, even after his (imaginative) return to Tintern Abbey through the fictionalised 
permanence of the completed 'pars epica' Wordsworth will he have to return home, for 
his life does not end with the end of the poem. Unlike Collins 's speaker, Words worth's 
does not inhabit the environment that Collins's deities do; it may, therefore, be argued 
that they and their spirituality permeate the landscape, whereas Words worth -through 
the association of "Tintern Abbey" with the hymnal ode tradition - hopes to gain the 
sense of permanence for which Collins's speaker strives continuously. Collins, however, 
aims to achieve a union with the emanations of Goddess Natura while Wordsworth, 
through his recollective capacity, is self-contained and reworks external impressions 
internally. 
The sublime, frequently considered as the prerequisite and defining feature of 
the ode, is representationally reflected in Wordsworth's descriptions of the natural 
environment at the abbey, that is, the "steep and lofty cliffs" (1. 5) which appear to be 
implanted into this "wild secluded scene" (1. 6). Wordsworth hopes that in this solitude 
of sublimity he will be able to find the "absolute essence of truth and feeling."28 In that 
respect, Wordsworth, as William Hazlitt suggested, "takes the simplest elements of 
nature and of the human mind, the mere abstract condition inseparable from our being, 
and tries to compound a new system of poetry from them."29 
Apart from the need for Wordsworth to find a place of "more deep seclusion" (1. 
7}, he aims to conquer his anxiety.-Paradoxically, seclusion and solitude enable him to 
hold communion with Nature as well as relieve his anxiety and fear of forgetting. Draw-
ing on the images of the "Immortality" ode he suggests that it is through recollection 
that he can bring back impressions and feelings long forgotten. The "utter nakedness" of 
forgetfulness and its disintegrating characteristics are counteracted by his self-assertive 
act of recollection. In that regard, Bernard Groom comprehends "Tintern Abbey" as "a 
panoramic vision of the power of the remembered landscape working under the surface 
in a mind perplexed with five years of inward conflict; and, by implication, a record 
of the creative instinct triumphing over the forces of disintegration.30 In other words, 
Wordsworth's speaker in his hymn on Nature and his account of his own growth resolves 
(at least temporarily) the "threat of a loss of vitality and happiness" that Michael Mason 
considers as the "groundwork"31 of "Tintern Abbey." 
The dialogic structure that is indicated formally through the invocation and the 
petition is alluded to at the beginning of the poem where Words worth uses an interjec-
tive opening which, as is later revealed through his address of the Wye, is addressed 
to the river rather than being what Bateson understands as a "reverie."32 As in the case 
of Collins who used metonymy frequently, Wordsworth conceives of the Wye as an 
emanation of the force of Nature. In that respect the repetition of "once again" (1. 4) in 
line 14 emphasises the personal relationship of the speaker with Nature. The paratacti-
cal syntax employs "again" several times to depict the speaker's unchangeable delight 
56 
1:1 Charles Sherry, Wordsworth's Poetry of Imagination (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 98. 
28 Hazlitt, "The Spirit of the Age," 86. 
29 Hazlitt, ''The Spirit of the Age," 87. 
30 Bernard Groom, The Unity ofWordsworth's Poetry (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1966), 33. 
31 Mason, ed., Lyrical Ballads, 206. 
32 Bateson is not aware of the generic association that "Tintern Abbey" has with the hymnal tradition, 
at beholding again what he had already seen five years before.33 In fact, the scene that 
Wordsworth is so eager to establish in terms of the picturesque is not real, but derives 
from those images that he has stored in his memory and which are then combined and 
perfected by his imagination. 
Thomas de Quincey, focusing on the central importance of Nature for Words worth 
and the poet's association of Nature with universal memory, observes that Wordsworth 
existed only "through his commerce with nature."34 In the imaginatively conjured en-
vironment of Tintern Abbey, the speaker is able to experience "long months of ease 
and undisturbed delight"35 which in reality were originally - that is on the occasion 
of his actual visit- no more than a "few passing moments."36 His measuring of time 
is influenced by his emotions and is therefore imaginatively prolonged. Rather than 
embedding his narrative within the mythical 'pars epica' of Collins's odes, the mytho-
logical machinery becomes unimportant and is replaced by Wordsworth's authority 
to evoke (and create) a world of memory, thereby achieving what Collins's speakers 
did not.37 The internalisation of memories and their metamorphosing recollection are 
seen as ways out of the dilemma of cultural progressivism. Pessimistically, however, 
Wordsworth is aware that he will ultimately have to return to society and to adopt his 
social function again. Mark Foster comments on the metaphor of the hermit that the 
poet assumes in his imaginative "reveries" and remarks that the hermit "represents not 
. simply_transcendence_or any.achievedrealisation, but rather an ideal of-decisive action 
and coherent relation,"38 a harmony that Wordsworth attempts to establish through his 
response to Nature; his speaking authority, as has already been indicated, ought there-
fore to be understood as his version of the fulfilment that Collins gained (in uncertain 
terms) through his invocations. 
The recollection of memories and the translations of them into "reveries" en-
able Wordsworth to experience "sensations sweet" (1. 27)39• In that regard, recollective 
introspection produces a pleasing and soothing effect on him, which he feels "in the 
blood" but also "along the heart" (1. 28). The memory of these scenes has become es-
sential to his being: 
These beauteous forms, 
Through a long absence, have not been to me 
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye. (ll. 22-24) 
especially as he considers them poem in terms of a monologue. See Bateson, Wordsworth, 143. 
33 See Eudo C. Mason, "Wordsworth: Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey," Versdichtung der 
englischen Romantik: Interpretationen, ed. Teut Andreas Riese and Dieter Riesner (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 
1968), 131. 
34 Thomas de Quincey, ''Essays on Wordsworth," Wordsworth. Poetry and Prose. With Essays by Coleridge, 
Hazlitt, de Quincey, ed. David Nichol Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), 40. 
35 Wordsworth, The Prelude, Bk. I, 26. 
36 Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: The Early Years (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 403. 
n On the importance of memory in the hymnal ode, see Sandro Jung, "Some Notes on William Mason 
and His Use of the 'Hymnal' Ode," Studia Neophilologica, 76:2 (2004), 176-81. 
38 Mark Foster, "Tintern Abbey and Wordsworth's Scene of Writing," Studies in Romanticism, 25:1 
(1986), 85. 
39 For the notion of sweetness, see Sandro Jung," 'Sweetness' in the Poetry ofWilliam Collins," English 
Language Notes, 41:3 (2003), 36-43. 
57 
The result of the experience of "sensations sweet" is the "spontaneous overflow 
of powerful feelings" which, he notes in the "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads, 
takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is 
contemplated till[ ... ] the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emo-
tion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is 
gradually produced, and does itself exist in the mind.40 
His "purer mind" (1. 29), that is, the place where all impressions and sensations 
are collected, collated and imaginatively purified, becomes the instrument of "tranquil 
restoration"; despite its epistemological inaccuracy, this recollected result of "tranquil 
restoration"- with its central component of the imagination- "reveals an important kind 
oftruth."41 Wordsworth, in that regard, confesses that he owes "this blessed Mood" (1. 
37) to Nature who helps him to cope with "the heavy and the weary weight I Of all this 
unintelligible world" (ll. 39-40). In other words, sublimation of mundane life is effected 
by means of imaginative processes. It is this form of mental (imaginative) escapism that 
has helped the speaker to withstand the "fever of the world." 
In "Tintern Abbey" Wordsworth's speaker poetically argues for Nature's ability 
to calm and soothe the human mind by providing the necessary impressive stimuli that 
are, in turn, reworked by the poet's imagination. It is these stimuli that reveal "amongst 
fields_and_mountains_a substitute n~ligion''42to Wordsworth. Natur~ posses~es ath~ra­
peutic character and assists Words worth in softening his Zivilisations-Klaustrophobie.43 
Nature's goodness is expressed in her "healing thoughts I Of tender joy" (ll. 144-45) 
which act like a balm on the poet's strained sensibility. As a "worshipper of Nature" 
(1. 152) Wordsworth is confident that Nature will not forget him to whom "these steep 
woods and lofty cliffs I And this green landscape [are] I More dear, both for themselves 
and for thy [Nature's] sake!" (ll. 157-59). This confidence and trust in Nature satisfy 
the poet "that he can get all the wisdom he needs from the world of nature as revealed 
by the senses."44 
Nature, Words worth notes, is the "anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, I The 
guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul I Of all my moral being" (11. 109-11 ). Nature 
is no longer assigned the role of a superior being (as Collins did to Goddess Natura) 
but is seen as part of Words worth, finding an emanation in Dorothy Words worth. He 
defines Nature by means of attributes that would usually have formed part of the ara-
tological description of the deity in the hymnal ode but appropriates them to his own 
mental growth. The speaker understands the spirit of Nature as omnipresent and identi-
fies it in the character of a companion who advises him on how to lead his life. In the 
poem it becomes less and less possible to know whom he is addressing: Logically, in 
line 114 he would still be addressing Nature; contextually, however, it can be inferred 
40 Wordsworth, "Preface," 62. 
41 Maurice Bowra, The Romantic Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 7. 
42 Basil Willey, The Eighteenth-Century Background. Studies on the Idea of Nature in the Thought of the 
Period (London: Chatto and Windus, 1950), 272. 
43 Kar1 Heinz Goller, "Die geistige Entwicklung Wordsworths," Die neueren Sprachen, 12 (1963), 343. 
44 Durrant, Wordsworth and the Great System, 104. See also Fritz Willy Schulze ed., W. Wordsworth I 
S. T. Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads. Historisch-kritisch herausgegeben von F. W. Schulze (Halle/Saale: Niemeyer, 
1952), 26-27. 
58 
that he invokes Dorothy, creating a deliberate ambiguity that can similarly be found in 
Collins's odes. This is an instance of what Bateson comprehended as the "concessions 
to irrationality" and the "logical contradictions" of the poem.45 The closeness of his re-
lationship with this companion (Dorothy- but, grammatically, also Nature) is expressed 
in his emphatic interjection "my dearest Friend, I My dear, dear Friend" (ll. 115-16), 
an address that is reminiscent of the hymnal address, despite Wordsworth's breaking 
down of all differences of status by collapsing the mythological and unreachably divine 
character of Nature and by approximating his own existence to that of his "guardian" 
and "guide." The hitherto public odic character of "Tintern Abbey" is here inverted, 
too, by his turning to his sister and announces Wordsworth's shift "to a more private 
poetry."46 The interjective "Oh" then establishes without doubt that he is now addressing 
his sister, revealing that "prayer" (1. 121) will be rewarded by Nature, as "Nature never 
did betray I The heart that loved her" (ll. 122-23). In short, 
[Nature] can so inform 
The mind that is within us, so impress 
With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 
Rash judgements, nor the sneers of selfish men, 
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
The dreary intercourse of daily life,· 
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold is full of blessings. (ll. 125-33) 
With the aid of Nature, Wordsworth's memory reconstructs and newly creates 
"all sweet sounds and harmonies" (1. 142). Nature, too, "will undertake to teach the 
speaker to prevent the destruction and forgetfulness of his recollections."47 Or, in Su-
san C. Meisenfelder's words, "Nature taught him not by offering platitudinous moral 
systems but by guiding perception, eliciting feelings, by teaching him 'to see, to think, 
and feel' ."48 Then, that is, in the 1790s, "the exercise of his imagination was primarily a 
source of pleasure, mingled with a melancholy awareness that what was imagined had 
to remain a dream, a fancy of nothingness."49 Reaching poetic maturity, however, the 
poet has succeeded in capturing the impressions of the past imaginatively and turned 
them into permanent and lasting reminders of the happiness he used to experience in his 
communion with Nature. With maturity Wordsworth has realised the true importance 
of memory and the imagination: 
For I have learned 
To look on nature, not as in the hour 
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often times 
The still, sad music of humanity, 
45 Bateson, Wordsworth, 141, 142. 
46 Bateson, Wordsworth, 145. 
47 See Willey, The Eighteenth-Century Background, 272, 277. 
48 Susan C. Meisenhelder, Wordsworth's Informed Reader: Structure and Experience in His Poetry 
(Nashville, Tennessee, 1988), 9. 
49 Christiansen, Romantic Affinities, 150. 
59 
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
To chasten and subdue. (11. 88-93) 
The dialectic of inevitable change and conjured permanence is central to "Tintern 
Abbey." Max Byrd, in that respect, speaks of the speaker's "shifting identities"50 and 
refers to his personal and artistic development. In a hymnal sense, what Willey terms the 
"divinization ofNature"51 results in the poet comprehending Nature both as divine and 
his muse. There is no distinction between Nature's divinity and her functions as guardian 
and companion any more, and this marks the poet's innovation within the hymnal tradi-
tion. Through his address of Nature, Words worth looks for ways of "how to reestablish 
that parallel permanence, how to be reabsorbed into steadying interdependence."52 His 
imaginative reworking of the past "is not so much recollected as created, as a specula-
tive refuge from the pressure to realise oneself in poetry."53 
Fred V. Ran del argues that "Tin tern Abbey" "is about living among ruins. "54 Word-
sworth was living among the ruins of the awareness that his (actual) past was irreparably 
lost to him. He was eager to construct a state of mind which had not yet "establish[ed] 
an identity separate from the world around"55 it. In the process, he wanted to rid his 
mind of the awareness that he is a "prisoner of mortality."56 Referring to what Willey 
called the "divinization of Nature," Marjorie Levinson argues that one of the central 
points why Wordsworth may have decided to avoid writing specifically about Tintern 
Abbey in the poem may have been hls-wish-to-exdudereligious,-anu-more precisely 
Christian thought, from his poemY Levinson does not realise that, notwithstanding 
Wordsworth's resistance to call his poem "ode," he was in fact using and inverting 
some elements such as the invocation and the 'pars epica' that Kurt Schltiter regarded 
as essential in the hymnal ode. That he did not adhere to the poetic practice of Collins 
can be explained with his different concerns: he was not a poet in search of a mythic 
gift of vision, but - possessed of Fancy - he succeeded in constructing that for which 
Collins (vainly) apostrophised deities such as Eve and Simplicity. Wordsworth was 
deeply rooted in the literary traditions of the eighteenth century, but he saw the need for 
generic experimentation to differentiate his voice from those of his predecessors. The 
hymnal tradition could still be used by a variety of Romantics such as Mary Robinson, 
Keats and Shelley but they had a classicist agenda rather than advocating the views of 
a "worshipper of Nature" (1. 152).58 
50 Byrd, "Metamorphosis and Tintern Abbey: Two Notes," 26. 
51 Willey, The Eighteenth-Century Background, 253. 
52 Byrd, "Metamorphosis and Tintern Abbey: Two Notes," 30. 
University of Salford, England 
53 Foster, "Tintern Abbey and Wordsworth's Scene of Writing," 88. 
54 Fred V. Randel, "The Betrayals of Tintern Abbey," Studies in Romanticism, 32:3 (1993), 379-97. 
55 A.S. Byatt, Unruly Times. Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Times (London: Vintage, 1997), 162. 
56 Byatt, Unruly Times, 163. 
57 See Marjorie Levinson, 'Insight and Oversight: Reading TinternAbbey', Wordsworth's Great Period 
Poems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 15. 
58 See Sandro Jung, "Some Notes on the Hellenism of Mary Robinson's Odes," Eighteenth-Century 
Women, 3 (2002), 185-97. 
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