For Wednesday: Wordsworth's Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey (pp.25-29)

NOTE: This is a longer poem, but it's really like a verse-letter to his sister, Dorothy, who was a writer herself (famous for her journals). Keep all the poems we've already read in mind, especially "My heart leaps up" and "We Are Seven," since this poem develops them in a more autobiographical way. Below, I've broken up the poem into several parts to help you follow it easier:

PART I: (First Look at a Beloved Place from Childhood)

"Five years have past; give summers, with the length" TO "The Hermit Sits alone"

PART II: (The Importance of Childhood Memories)

"Those beauteous forms" TO "How often has my spirit turned to thee!"

PART III:(Why It's Not the Same Anymore)
"And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought" TO "Unborrowed from the eye"

PART IV: (What It Means to Me Now)

"That time is past" TO "Of all my moral being"

PART V: (What It Can Do For You)

"Nor perchance," TO "Is full of blessings"

PART IV: (Parting Thoughts)

"Therefore let the moon" TO "More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!" 

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Answer TWO of the questions below for Wednesday's class:

Q1: One of the most recurring words in the first part of the poem is "again." Why might this be an important sentiment for this poem? Why is there no past and present for Wordsworth, but instead an "again" and an "once more"? 

Q2: In Part 2-3, Wordsworth claims that the most powerful forces in a person are due to "unremembered pleasure," "unremembered acts," and "half-extinguished thoughts." Why are many of the most sublime and powerful memories ones that we have largely forgotten and are alive only in our subconscious? How does he explain this?

Q3: What is the difference between how he understood Nature as a child and how he appreciates it today? Though he can never see or experience Nature as a child again, why does he admit "other gifts/Have followed; for such loss, I believe,/Abundant recompense." What has he gained for his loss?

Q4: At the top of page 28, he writes that he loves everything "From this green earth; of all the mighty world/Of eye, and ear--both what they half create,/And what perceive." Why does he feel Nature is both seen and imagined? How do we "half create" the external world? 

Q5: At the end of the poem, he tells his sister that "these wild ecstasies shall be matured/into a sober pleasure...a mansion for all lovely forms,/Thy memory be as a dwelling place for all sweet sounds and harmonies." What does this say about the power of memory in the face of age and experience? Why do we all need to create a "mansion for all lovely forms" in our minds?