" AN ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHY ARD "

Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” was first published in 1751. Gray may,
however, have begun writing the poem in 1742, shortly after the death of his close friend Richard
West. An elegy is a poem which laments the dead. Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is
noteworthy in that it mourns the death not of great or famous people, but of common men. The
speaker of this poem sees a country churchyard at sunset, which impels him to meditate on the nature
of human mortality. The poem invokes the classical idea of memento mori, a Latin phrase which states
plainly to all mankind, “Remember that you must die.” The speaker considers the fact that in death,
there is no difference between great and common people. He goes on to wonder if among the lowly
people buried in the churchyard there had been any natural poets or politicians whose talent had
simply never been discovered or nurtured. This thought leads him to praise the dead for the honest,
simple lives that they lived.

Gray did not produce a great deal of poetry; the “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” however,
has earned him a respected and deserved place in literary history. The poem was written at the end of
the Augustan Age and at the beginning of the Romantic period, and the poem has characteristics
associated with both literary periods. On the one hand, it has the ordered, balanced phrasing and
rational sentiments of Neoclassical poetry. On the other hand, it tends toward the emotionalism and
individualism of the Romantic poets; most importantly, it idealizes and elevates the common man.

1 The Curfew tolls the Knell of parting Day,

2 The lowing Herd wind slowly o'er the Lea,
3 The Plowman homeward plods his weary Way,
4 And leaves the World to Darkness and to me.
5 Now fades the glimm'ring Landscape on the Sight,
6 And all the Air a Solemn Stillness holds,
7 Save where the Beetle wheels his droning Flight,
8 And drowsy Tinklings lull the distant Folds;
9 Save that from yonder Ivy-mantled Tow'r
10 The moping Owl does to the Moon complain
11 Of such, as wand'ring near her secret Bow'r,
12 Molest her ancient solitary Reign.
13 Beneath those rugged Elms, that Yew-Tree's Shade,
14 Where heaves the Turf in many a mould'ring Heap,
15 Each in his narrow Cell forever laid,
16 The rude Forefathers of the Hamlet sleep.
17 The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
18 The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
19 The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
20 No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
21 For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
22 Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
23 No children run to lisp their sire's return,
24 Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
25 Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
26 Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
27 How jocund did they drive their team afield!
28 How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
 Poem Summary

Lines 1-4

In the first stanza, the speaker observes the signs of a country day drawing to a close: a curfew bell
ringing, a herd of cattle moving across the pasture, and a farm laborer returning home. The speaker is
then left alone to contemplate the isolated rural scene. The first line of the poem sets a distinctly
somber tone: the curfew bell does not simply ring; it “knells” — a term usually applied to bells rung at
a death or funeral. From the start, then, Gray reminds us of human mortality.

Lines 5-8

The second stanza sustains the somber tone of the first: the speaker is not mournful, but pensive, as
he describes the peaceful landscape that surrounds him. Even the air is characterized as having a
“solemn stillness.”

Lines 9-12

The sound of an owl hooting intrudes upon the evening quiet. We are told that the owl “complains”; in
this context, the word does not mean “to whine” or “grumble,” but “to express sorrow.” The owl’s call,
then, is suggestive of grief. Note that at no point in these three opening stanzas does Gray directly
refer to death or a funeral; rather, he indirectly creates a funereal atmosphere by describing just a few
mournful sounds.

Lines 13-16

It is in the fourth stanza that the speaker directly draws our attention to the graves in the country
churchyard. We are presented with two potentially conflicting images of death. Line 14 describes the
heaps of earth surrounding the graves; in order to dig a grave, the earth must necessarily be
disrupted. Note that the syntax of this line is slightly confusing. We would expect this sentence to read
“Where the turf heaves” — not “where heaves the turf”: Gray has inverted the word order. Just as the
earth has been disrupted, the syntax imitates the way in which the earth has been disrupted. But by
the same token, the “rude Forefathers” buried beneath the earth seem entirely at peace: we are told
that they are laid in “cells,” a term which reminds us of the quiet of a monastery, and that they “sleep.”

Lines 17-20

If the “Forefathers” are sleeping, however, the speaker reminds us that they will never again rise from
their “beds” to hear the pleasurable sounds of country life that the living do. The term “lowly beds”
describes not only the unpretentious graves in which the forefathers are buried, but the humble
conditions that they endured when they were alive.

Lines 21-24

The speaker then moves on to consider some of the other pleasures the dead will no longer enjoy: the
happiness of home, wife, and children.

Lines 25-28

The dead will also no longer be able to enjoy the pleasures of work, of plowing the fields each day.
This stanza points to the way in which the “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” contains elements
of both Augustan and Romantic poetry. Poetry that describes agriculture — as this one does — is
called georgic. Georgic verse was extremely popular in the eighteenth century. Note, however, that
Gray closely identifies the farmers with the land that they work. This association of man and nature is
suggestive of a romantic attitude. The georgic elements of the stanza almost demand that we
characterize it as typical of the eighteenth century, but its tone looks forward to the Romantic period.

THEMES

Death

Gray’s “Elegy” is one of the best-known poems about death in all of European literature. The poem
presents the reflections of an observer who, passing by a churchyard that is out in the country, stops
for a moment to think about the significance of the strangers buried there. Scholars of medieval times
sometimes kept human skulls on their desktops, to keep themselves conscious of the fact that
someday they, like the skulls’ former occupants, would die: from this practice we get the phrase
memento mori, which we say to this day to describe any token one uses to keep one’s mortality in
mind. In this poem, the graveyard acts as a memento mori, reminding the narrator to not place too
much value on this life because someday he too will be dead and buried. The speaker of the poem is
surrounded by the idea of death, and throughout the first seven stanzas there are numerous images
pointing out the contrast between death and life. After mentioning the churchyard in the title, which
establishes the theme of mortality, the poem itself begins with images of gloom and finality. The
darkness at the end of the day, the forlorn moan of lowing cattle, the stillness of the air (highlighted by
the beetle’s stilted motion) and the owl’s nocturnal hooting all serve to set a background for this
serious meditation. However, it is not until the fourth stanza that the poem actually begins to deal
with the cemetery, mentioned as the place where the village forefathers “sleep.” In the following
stanzas, the speaker tries to imagine what the lives of these simple men might have been like,
touching upon their relations with their wives, children, and the soil that they worked. They are not
defined by their possessions, because they had few, and instead are defined by their actions, which
serves to contrast their lives with their quiet existence in the graveyard. This “Elegy” presents the
dead in the best light: their families adored them and they were cheerful in their work, as they
“hummed the woods beneath their steady stroke.” The speaker openly admits that they are spoken of
so well precisely because they are dead, because death is such a terrible thing that its victims deserve
the respect of the living. In line 90, the poet explains, “Some pious drops the closing eye requires,”
explaining that the living should show their respect for death with their sorrow.

Class Conflict

A superficial reading of this poem might leave the impression that the author intends to present
members of the lower class as being more worthy of praise than their upper-class counterparts. This
would be a reasonable assumption, since so much of the poem is devoted to praising the simple
virtues of the poor. In the larger scope, though, the position that Gray takes is that all people, poor or
rich, are equal. This is a meditation on death, which has been called the “great equalizer” because no
can avoid it. The reason that the poem seems to favor one class over the other is that it is working
against the assumption that only those of the upper class are worthy of attention when they die. It is
the humble condition of the country churchyard, with gravestones unmarked or possibly marked just
with names by illiterate people unable to read, that draws attention to the virtues of the poor and
uneducated (which society often forgets), and so much of the poem is spent praising their moral
strength. The virtues of the wealthy and famous are not denied, they just are not explored in this
poem because they are already so familiar. Evidence of the poem’s evenhandedness about the
different classes can be seen in the fact that, while praising the poor country people throughout, Gray
also acknowledges that education, which may give them opportunity to develop moral excellence, may
also lead them to corruption: as he says in stanza 17, the humble circumstances of the poor limited the
growth not only of their virtues but also of their crimes. The poem thus leaves open the question of
superiority. Society glorifies the rich, and the poem’s narrator glorifies the poor, but, as he reminds us,
“The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

HOW FAR IS THOMAS GRAY SUCCESSFUL IN CREATING AN ELEGIAC ATMOSPHERE IN HIS "ELEGY
WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD"?

-The elegiac atmosphere is established immediately in the poem with Gray's description of the
countryside surrounding the cemetery and the time of day that makes up the poem's setting. The day
is ending:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,

The plowman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

The reference to "tolls the knell" suggests the slow and deep ringing of a funeral church bell. As the
cattle return from pasture, their "lowing" creates a sense of softness and peace. The plowman is tired,
moving slowly homeward. Darkness is falling. Everything in the opening stanza has connotations of
fading light as quiet and stillness slowly descend upon the scene.

The second stanza continues the tone:

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight.

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

As the darkness gathers, the countryside fades from view. A "solemn stillness" reigns, except for the
"droning" sound of a beetle in flight and the "drowsy tinklings" of herds with their cow bells moving in
pastures far away and out of sight.

The only other sound that disturbs the stillness is introduced in the third stanza, that of a "moping
owl" that can be heard as the moon shines down upon the "yonder ivy-mantled tower" where her
secret nest can be found.

In these three stanzas, Gray establishes a somber atmosphere through rich sensory detail that
perfectly suits the content and the tone of the elegy to follow.

-To have an elegiac tone, it needs to adequately convey a feeling of expressing remorse and sadness
for something that is past, or lost. In his poem, Thomas Gray mourns for the lost lives of all of the
country people that are buried there. He does this rather successfully. He starts right off creating a
sad, lonely, morose tone as the last light fades and he is left alone in the graveyard. The last plowman
"leaves the world to darkness and me," which sets a melancholy tone right away. An elegiac tone
would not be upbeat or cheerful, so Gray puts himself alone, at night, right off the bat to set the right
mood for an elegy. The environment and setting itself are symbols of loss and death; the fact that
"fades the glimmering landscape" and day dies out, just as these people's lives died out, sets the right
mood.

Then, after having set the mood, Gray actually becomes openly elegiac. He goes on and on about how
these people shall "no more" go about the different aspects of their lives; he mentions farmers,
housewives, and children. He mourns the loss of their "jocund" work, their "sturdy" ways. He lectures
anyone who would judge or mock these simple farmers and peasants. He says that they too deserve
mourning.

It is possibly after this point that the poem gets a bit less elegiac and more contemplative; he ponders
life and death in general, and not specifically in relation to these people that have passed on. And the
ending is futuristically mournful, as he imagines his own life having passed on. So, in this poem the
best tone of elegiac moods are in the beginning as he sets up the moods with the setting, and
specifically relates the losses of the lives of the people in the churchyard.

WHAT ARE SOME NEO-CLASSICAL FEATURES IN THOMAS GRAY'S "ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY
CHURCHYARD"?

In his "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," Thomas Gray employs the neo-classical use of
personification in his poem of strict iambic pentameter with eloquent classical diction. There is a
compliance and conformity to the classical form of an elegy as Gray gives his individual estimate of the
world, which is, however, a Romantic expression.

The pace of iambic pentameter [an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable 5 times--ta dum,
ta dum, ta dum, ta dum, ta dum] is dignified, and Gray makes skillful use of monosyllabic words and
long vowels in his elegy. The following stanza is an example:

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,/Their sober wishes never learned to stray;/Along the
cool, sequestered vale of life/They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Personification is also a neo-classical trait which Gray utilizes:

The boast of hearldry, the pomp of power,/And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,/Awaits alike
the inevitable hour:/The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Of course, this elegy which laments the dead, evokes the classical idea of momento mori, a Latin phrase
meaning "Remember that you must die." Death comes to all, the exalted and the humble; Gray reflects
upon the lives of the common people buried in the churchyard, lives spent doing labor with simple
enjoyments at the end of the day.

WHAT ARE THE ROMANTIC FEATURES THAT CAN BE TRACED IN THOMAS GRAYS'S ELEGY WRITTEN
IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD?

In Thomas Gray's "Elegy" there are numerous features common to the romantic period and
romanticism.

Firstly is the prevalence of nature and its emphasis as being a place where meditation and deeply
spiritual epiphanies occur. We look at the poem's imagery and we notice deeply sublime notions such
as "drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds" and the "breezy call of incense-breathing morn."

We see the inevitability of death in the ninth stanza and much of the imagery changes to contemplate
death and our mortality. As the poet stands in the sublimity of nature he is speculating on how there
might very well be people similar to Milton and Cromwell reposing beneath his feet.

Mostly, it is an intimate meditation on our mortality. This tendency for meditation is so very common
in most Romantic literature, especially its poetry.

WHY ARE THE POOR AND THE RICH EQUAL ACCORDING TO "ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY
CHURCHYARD"?
All of the things you say are correct, and in Gray's poem. Mainly, first and foremost, it's because they
are equal in death:

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,

If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death

It's not their fault, the speaker says, if people don't build trophies and monuments over their tombs, in
cathedrals. Storied urns (painted vases) and statues and busts are all well and good, but they don't
make you breathe again. They don't bring you back to life. Honour doesn't make dust move. Flattery
doesn't make cold Death warm. No matter how you're remembered, dead is dead.

Moreover, Gray's speaker says, life is about opportunities:

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid...

Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed...

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page

Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Perhaps among the poor lie a potential emperor. But life didn't give them opportunity to read books
and gain knowledge. It is chance that they were born different.

HOW IS "ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD" REPRESENTATIVE OF ITS TIME IN STYLE

AND THEME?

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" was written just before the Romantic Period. He wrote at the
same time as Johnson (the compiler of the first English dictionary). This is significant because Gray's
work is famous for two reasons. The first is that it is a great example of a pastoral. Pastorals were
typical of this time period as they glorified country settings. The second reason the poem is typical of
the time is because it glorifies the common man. This theme was important during a time when
Johnson was making language accessible to everyone.

IN "ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD," WHAT ARE 5

ALLEGORICAL FIGURES THAT THE SPEAKER USES TO ILLUSTRATE
HUMANITY?

The speaker of the poem represents humankind and contemplates man's destiny and death. The "rude
forefathers" also symbolize humanity as well. All human beings are going to die no matter how rich
they are or how famous they are while living. The speaker then divides humans into categories based on
their characteristics and attitudes. He says "Ambition" and "Grandeur" shouldn't think less of poor people
because they didn't accomplish great things. "Pride" and "Memory" have no right to ignore or forget
them, and "Honor" and "Flattery" will no longer be useful to the rich once they are dead. The speaker,
who is educated, doesn't even consider "Knowledge" to be a factor in making someone a good person.
 The speaker also speculates what many of the poor could have accomplished if they had been given the
opportunity to do so. They too could have been a great leader or a great poet if given the chance. But then
the speaker also says that even though the poor accomplished nothing of greatness, they are probably
morally superior to the wealthy and the famous.

WHAT IS THE DESCRIPTION OF THE SCENE IN THE CHURCHYARD GIVEN IN LINES

1-20?
Broken into stanzas, the description of the scene in the churchyard given in lines 1-20 is as follows.
Lines 1-4: the speaker observes the signs of a country day drawing to a close: a curfew bell ringing,
herd of cattle moving across the pasture, a farm laborer returning home. The speaker is left alone to
consider the isolation of the rural scene and carry out a somber tone he has begun in line one.
Lines 5-8:
The somber tone continues: the speaker is not mournful, but contemplative, as he describes the
peaceful landscape that surrounds him. He characterizes the air as having a "solemn stillness."
Lines 9-12:
The sound of an owl hooting intrudes upon the evening quiet, which is considered complaining; in this
context, the word does not mean "to whine" but "to express sorrow" and is even suggestive of grief.
Lines 13-16:
Here our attention is drawn directly to the graves in the country churchyard and we are presented
with two images of death. Line 14 describes the heaps of earth surrounding the graves of "rude
Forefathers", and that they are laid in "cells," a term which reminds us of the quiet of a monastery, and
that they "sleep."
Lines 17-20:
If the "Forefathers" are sleeping, however, the speaker reminds us they will never again rise from
their "beds" to hear the sounds of country life that the living do. The term "lowly beds" describes not
only the modest graves in which the forefathers are buried, but the humble conditions that they
endured when they were alive.

WHAT IS THE SCENE IN THE CHURCHYARD GIVEN IN LINES 1-20 OF "ELEGY

WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD"?
The setting presented in the first twenty lines of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is of a
graveyard at twilight. The scene is set beautifully with the church bell ringing the ending of the day
while the cows head home. Everything is still except for the night life of the insects and owls.
Suddenly, in line 13 and beyond, Gray reveals that this somber beauty is actually contained not just
within the churchyard, but within the graveyard for the farmers of the hamlet. We find that the bell
ringing at the beginning of the poem may have been a funeral knell, which leads us into a more
somber tone. Although the swallow continues his song, these people, of course, will not rise. The
poem in itself is a beautiful combination of beauty and sadness. Gray's poem is truly a perfect
example of pre-Romantic poetry.

WHAT DOES THE THIRD STANZA OF THE POEM "ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY
CHURCHYARD" MEAN?
9. Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
10. The moping owl does to the moon complain
11. Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
12. Molest her ancient solitary reign.

He is saying it is all very quiet and peaceful (stanza 1 and 2) except for the sound of the owl, who is
complaining to the moon about those who disrupt the solitude of her domain. Gray's note about this
stanza is: "Molest her ancient solitary reign. - bother the owl while it keeps watch over the churchyard
and countryside." (While you're at it, note the use of personification here). The solitary hooting of the
owl probably adds to the mournful feeling.
 WHAT IS THE FIGURE OF SPEECH IN "AN ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD" FROM
LINES 1-28?

Thomas Gray, the poet, employs an extended metaphor in the first 7 stanzas to compare the end of
humans' life and the mourning for their loss to the end of a day. His use of colors such as grey, sounds
such as animals who are readying for the night or the bell "knelling," and images such as a
"mouldering heap" of turf illustrate the close of not only the day but also of a life that will never
experience those colors, sounds, or images again.

SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE

WILLIAM BLAKE

ANALYSIS

Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794) juxtapose the innocent, pastoral world of childhood
against an adult world of corruption and repression; while such poems as “The Lamb” represent a
meek virtue, poems like “The Tyger” exhibit opposing, darker forces. Thus the collection as a whole
explores the value and limitations of two different perspectives on the world. Many of the poems fall
into pairs, so that the same situation or problem is seen through the lens of innocence first and then
experience. Blake does not identify himself wholly with either view; most of the poems are dramatic—
that is, in the voice of a speaker other than the poet himself. Blake stands outside innocence and
experience, in a distanced position from which he hopes to be able to recognize and correct the
fallacies of both. In particular, he pits himself against despotic authority, restrictive morality, sexual
repression, and institutionalized religion; his great insight is into the way these separate modes of
control work together to squelch what is most holy in human beings.

The Songs of Innocence dramatize the naive hopes and fears that inform the lives of children and trace
their transformation as the child grows into adulthood. Some of the poems are written from the
perspective of children, while others are about children as seen from an adult perspective. Many of the
poems draw attention to the positive aspects of natural human understanding prior to the corruption
and distortion of experience. Others take a more critical stance toward innocent purity: for example,
while Blake draws touching portraits of the emotional power of rudimentary Christian values, he also
exposes—over the heads, as it were, of the innocent—Christianity’s capacity for promoting injustice
and cruelty.

The Songs of Experience work via parallels and contrasts to lament the ways in which the harsh
experiences of adult life destroy what is good in innocence, while also articulating the weaknesses of
the innocent perspective (“The Tyger,” for example, attempts to account for real, negative forces in the
universe, which innocence fails to confront). These latter poems treat sexual morality in terms of the
repressive effects of jealousy, shame, and secrecy, all of which corrupt the ingenuousness of innocent
love. With regard to religion, they are less concerned with the character of individual faith than with
the institution of the Church, its role in politics, and its effects on society and the individual mind.
Experience thus adds a layer to innocence that darkens its hopeful vision while compensating for
some of its blindness.

The style of the Songs of Innocence and Experience is simple and direct, but the language and the
rhythms are painstakingly crafted, and the ideas they explore are often deceptively complex. Many of
the poems are narrative in style; others, like “The Sick Rose” make their arguments through
symbolism or by means of abstract concepts. Some of Blake’s favorite rhetorical techniques are
personification and the reworking of Biblical symbolism and language. Blake frequently employs the
familiar meters of ballads, nursery rhymes, and hymns, applying them to his own, often unorthodox
conceptions. This combination of the traditional with the unfamiliar is consonant with Blake’s
perpetual interest in reconsidering and reframing the assumptions of human thought and social
behavior.

“HOLY THURSDAY”

’Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean

The children walking two & two in red & blue & green
Grey headed beadles walk’d before with wands as white as snow
Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow

O what a multitude they seem’d these flowers of London town

Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own
The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among
Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door

SUMMARY

On Holy Thursday (Ascension Day), the clean-scrubbed charity-school children of London flow like a
river toward St. Paul’s Cathedral. Dressed in bright colors they march double-file, supervised by “gray
headed beadles.” Seated in the cathedral, the children form a vast and radiant multitude. They remind
the speaker of a company of lambs sitting by the thousands and “raising their innocent hands” in
prayer. Then they begin to sing, sounding like “a mighty wind” or “harmonious thunderings,” while
their guardians, “the aged men,” stand by. The speaker, moved by the pathos of the vision of the
children in church, urges the reader to remember that such urchins as these are actually angels of God.

FORM

The poem has three stanzas, each containing two rhymed couplets. The lines are longer than is typical
for Blake’s Songs, and their extension suggests the train of children processing toward the cathedral,
or the flowing river to which they are explicitly compared.

COMMENTARY

The poem’s dramatic setting refers to a traditional Charity School service at St. Paul’s Cathedral on
Ascension Day, celebrating the fortieth day after the resurrection of Christ. These Charity Schools
were publicly funded institutions established to care for and educate the thousands of orphaned and
abandoned children in London. The first stanza captures the movement of the children from the
schools to the church, likening the lines of children to the Thames River, which flows through the
heart of London: the children are carried along by the current of their innocent faith. In the second
stanza, the metaphor for the children changes. First they become “flowers of London town.” This
comparison emphasizes their beauty and fragility; it undercuts the assumption that these destitute
children are the city’s refuse and burden, rendering them instead as London’s fairest and finest. Next
the children are described as resembling lambs in their innocence and meekness, as well as in the
sound of their little voices. The image transforms the character of humming “multitudes,” which might
first have suggested a swarm or hoard of unsavory creatures, into something heavenly and sublime.
The lamb metaphor links the children to Christ (whose symbol is the lamb) and reminds the reader of
Jesus’s special tenderness and care for children. As the children begin to sing in the third stanza, they
are no longer just weak and mild; the strength of their combined voices raised toward God evokes
something more powerful and puts them in direct contact with heaven. The simile for their song is
first given as “a mighty wind” and then as “harmonious thunderings.” The beadles, under whose
authority the children live, are eclipsed in their aged pallor by the internal radiance of the children. In
this heavenly moment the guardians, who are authority figures only in an earthly sense, sit “beneath”
the children.

The final line advises compassion for the poor. The voice of the poem is neither Blake’s nor a child’s,
but rather that of a sentimental observer whose sympathy enhances an already emotionally affecting
scene. But the poem calls upon the reader to be more critical than the speaker is: we are asked to
contemplate the true meaning of Christian pity, and to contrast the institutionalized charity of the
schools with the love of which God—and innocent children—are capable. Moreover, the visual picture
given in the first two stanzas contains a number of unsettling aspects: the mention of the children’s
clean faces suggests that they have been tidied up for this public occasion; that their usual state is
quite different. The public display of love and charity conceals the cruelty to which impoverished
children were often subjected. Moreover, the orderliness of the children’s march and the ominous
“wands” (or rods) of the beadles suggest rigidity, regimentation, and violent authority rather than
charity and love. Lastly, the tempestuousness of the children’s song, as the poem transitions from
visual to aural imagery, carries a suggestion of divine wrath and vengeance.

“THE SICK ROSE”

O Rose thou art sick.

The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

SUMMARY

The speaker, addressing a rose, informs it that it is sick. An “invisible” worm has stolen into its bed in
a “howling storm” and under the cover of night. The “dark secret love” of this worm is destroying the
rose’s life.

FORM

The two quatrains of this poem rhyme ABCB. The ominous rhythm of these short, two-beat lines
contributes to the poem’s sense of foreboding or dread and complements the unflinching directness
with which the speaker tells the rose she is dying.

COMMENTARY

While the rose exists as a beautiful natural object that has become infected by a worm, it also exists as
a literary rose, the conventional symbol of love. The image of the worm resonates with the Biblical
serpent and also suggests a phallus. Worms are quintessentially earthbound, and symbolize death and
decay. The “bed” into which the worm creeps denotes both the natural flowerbed and also the lovers’
bed. The rose is sick, and the poem implies that love is sick as well. Yet the rose is unaware of its
sickness. Of course, an actual rose could not know anything about its own condition, and so the
emphasis falls on the allegorical suggestion that it is love that does not recognize its own ailing state.
This results partly from the insidious secrecy with which the “worm” performs its work of
corruption—not only is it invisible, it enters the bed at night. This secrecy indeed constitutes part of
the infection itself. The “crimson joy” of the rose connotes both sexual pleasure and shame, thus
joining the two concepts in a way that Blake thought was perverted and unhealthy. The rose’s joyful
attitude toward love is tainted by the aura of shame and secrecy that our culture attaches to love.

LUCY GRAY BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The poem is in three main sections. The first (stanzas 1–3) is in the

narrative ‘present’, looking back to her time and place; the middle

section (stanzas 4–14) relates to Lucy’s fruitless search for her mother

in the storm; the final section returns to the ‘present’ and the mem

ory of her disappearance.

I have chosen to analyse stanzas 1–9:

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray,

And when I crossed the wild,

I chanced to see at break of day

The solitary child.

No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;

She dwelt on a wild moor,

The sweetest thing that ever grew

Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the fawn at play,

The hare upon the green;

But the sweet face of Lucy Gray

Will never more be seen.

10

‘To-night will be a stormy night,

You to the town must go,

And take a lantern, Child, to light

Your Mother through the snow.’

15

‘That, Father! will I gladly do;

’Tis scarcely afternoon –

The Minster-clock has just struck two,

And yonder is the Moon.’ 20

At this the Father raised his hook

And snapped a faggot-band;

He plied his work, and Lucy took

The lantern in her hand.

Not blither is the mountain roe – 25

With many a wanton stroke

Her feet disperse the powdery snow

That rises up like smoke.

The storm came on before its time,

She wandered up and down,

And many a hill did Lucy climb

But never reached the town.

30

The wretched parents all that night

Went shouting far and wide;

But there was neither sound nor sight

To serve them for a guide.

35

The opening four stanzas make very clear Lucy’s isolation but also anticipate her end by the warning
that she will ‘Never more be seen’, highlighting the poem’s balladic sense of doom. The opening of the
poem is typical of ballad style, with a simple but memorable, mythical anecdote, often handed down
by word of mouth concerned with the life (or death) of a local figure.

Stanza 5 suggests a readily compliant, obedient Lucy who is respectful of her father with a strong
sense of filial duty. The imminence of the storm reveals her trusting innocence, and eagerness to
please (‘That, Father! will I gladly do …’, l. 17). Her assignment also reveals her vital function in the
family, with a specific role to fulfil and it is filled with a quite onerous mission.

‘Not blither’ in line 25 stresses her eagerness as well as her naive, trusting nature, which helps
prepare her role as the victim. The remainder of stanza 7, with that image of Lucy idly kicking up the
snow, beautifully evokes the heedless complacency of childhood – while the word ‘wanton’ points up
her utter absorption in this casual fun. Gradually, and tragically, this abstraction transforms into
disorientation, she loses her way, and Lucy becomes enveloped in the snow and consumed into the
landscape. Some of these important elements are hinted at and reinforced elsewhere in the poem. In
line 7 she is described as the ‘sweetest thing’ and this charm is taken up again with the girl’s ‘sweet
face’ four lines later. As well as her endearing cuteness, these references also
endorse the feeling of vulnerability she exudes. The simplicity of the

natural setting together with its minimalist details are in naturalistic

sympathy with the girl’s disposition in the poem. However, these

points also have the effect of extending Lucy beyond her actuality as a

living girl by implying that she is herself part of nature, or at least in

close affinity with it. And this idea is further emphasised by the associations

made between Lucy and the local animals: the fawn (9),

hare (10) and the mountain roe (25). The fact that these endure after

her death reminds us of the sense of her as innocent victim.

Some of these issues are anticipated in the second stanza where she

is described as The sweetest thing that ever grew

Beside a human door! (7–8) in which ‘Beside a human door’ implies a strange metamorphism, not

quite human but indigenous and somewhere on the mysterious threshold between the human and the
natural. So while Lucy is intrinsic to the family she also belongs inherently to the natural scene outside
the house. Perhaps this accounts for her readiness to obey her father and her ‘wanton’ absorption into
the landscape once outside. But what can we make of her parents? In the above passage the fact that
Wordsworth gives us the actual words of Lucy’s father presents him directly before us. Yet at the same
time the father seems dogmatic and imposing towards Lucy: You to the town must go, And take a
lantern (14–15) After his instruction he turns suddenly, back to his tasks, sharply (and fatally) cutting
off his daughter to the storm. His manner is cold, peremptory but, with evident irony, he is redeemed
by Lucy’s cheerful innocence – at first anyway. He too comes across here as a lonely figure, lost in his
work but somehow confident of Lucy’s familiarisation with the wilderness. A commanding patriarchal
figure, her father seems god-like and the deftness with which he raises his hook and ‘snapped a
faggot-band’ (22), strengthens the impression of a brusque and forthright man.

The symbolic role of the parents in the poem is pointed up by their oddly curt attitude to Lucy. In
blunt terms, Lucy is exploited by her father, shirking the job himself, though stanza 6 implies that he is
inattentive rather than culpable, taking her for granted. This in turn heightens Lucy’s function as the
innocent victim, one strand of the poem being the way she is subjected to the will of others (compare
two other poems in which children are sent away: ‘The Idiot Boy’ in which Betty sends her son for a
doctor and he gets lost, and Michael in which Isabel reluctantly sends her son Luke to his kinsman and
he too becomes ‘lost’, but in a slightly different sense).

In spite of this, line 33 describes the parents as ‘wretched’, pointing to their own sense of guilt as well
as remorseful loss, and Wordsworth is careful not to wag fingers or turn the poem into a lament.
Instead the final section of the poem (stanzas 15 and 16) directs attention away from the parents and
onto the mysterious aftermath concerning Lucy herself. This unexpected ending wrong-foots the
reader of course. Yet, further, by suddenly raising the tempo towards that enigmatic void at the end,
Wordsworth foregrounds the symbolic elements of the poem and of the eponymous heroine herself.
She was never found but has, apparently, become elemental, transmuted into the very nature of the
landscape itself (a point anticipated in lines 6–8), taken back into and reclaimed by nature. But since
she was never found alive again, we too are led back into the poem for clues.

As so often with Wordsworth’s lyrical ballads the simple diction makes the lyric seem simple, even
banal. It is even so here, that we have more than a sorry tale of a young girl’s death in the winter
storm. The final two stanzas enigmatically re-route us back into the poem for a re-reading of its signs.
Although her father orders Lucy out on a mission, it is ironically the careless parents themselves who
embark on the mission, in search of a lost or evasive childhood. It is they who follow her tracks, and
try to decipher her signs left in the snow: childhood becomes the moral guide to adulthood and
ironically Lucy takes over the educational role. Significantly she holds

a light before her in the storm, ‘to light / Your Mother through the snow’ (15; and we recall her name
derives from the Latin lux/lucis for ‘light’). Furthermore, her recognition of the moon in line 20
suggests that she sees in it something of a natural, celestial father. She is the light and this, together
with her blithe uncomplicated innocence, discloses her role as moral leader.

In death she becomes teasingly elusive. The poem’s final line implies that she endures within the
moorland wind, ephemeral, immortal and incorporeal, the genius loci. In line 62, she ‘never looks
behind’, colloquially suggesting the clearness of her own conscience. Conversely, though ‘lost’, she
persists as a haunting reality of stoicism, loyalty and release from care as her careworn parents trace
the ghostly prints of ‘Lucy’s feet’ and ‘footmarks small’ (lines 44 and 46): like the reader, they willhave
to interpret such signs in order to interpret and recover the lost life. The death of Lucy is the loss of
childhood in the storm of approaching adult life.

In the end Wordsworth is teasingly silent on Lucy’s exact position, her ‘message’ in the poem.
Instead he alerts us to the special character of childhood, its mysteriously transcendent quality and
special relationship with nature. At the nub of these is Lucy’s solitude, a point which is underlined by
the fact that when Wordsworth later revised the poem he extended its title to ‘Lucy Gray, or Solitude’,
making explicit what was simply implied No mate, no comrade Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wild moor
(5–6)

The wild moor (Wordsworth later changed this to ‘wide moor’) and the absence of friends draw
attention to the desolation and loneliness of a lakeland childhood – though Lucy herself does not
actually experience loneliness. Yet ‘No mate’ goes significantly further and even denotes her pre-
sexual status. At the time of her disappearance she is transitional between childhood and adulthood.
Literally and figuratively she is moving towards the mother. But her disappearance fixes her at pre-
pubescence in the storm of adolescence, and like the ‘bride of wood’ she represents a sort of linkage,
but incomplete. (The storm symbol also appears in ‘Three years she grew’ and there are echoes of it in
‘Nutting’ and ‘There was a Boy’; see below for a discussion of the ‘storm’ symbol.)

She can be seen as a pivotal, if incomplete, link in a poem constructed of antitheses: between country
and town, father and mother, high and low, calm and storm. Lucy herself, however, is not presented as
incomplete though she is departing into a sort of limbo apparently before her time. In fact her most
crucial transition – that between mortal and immortal – has the unmistakable air of fulfilment, even if
this remains an unhappy conundrum for her parents. Central to this theme of bridging mortal and
immortal states is that of time. The poem has numerous references to the temporal – for instance,
each of its main sections opens with a specific reference to time as well as to physical actions. For Lucy
the storm represents a matrix of conflicting natural elements and, ironically, it is through these that
she will eventually transcend the realm of the human (which is characterised by the pre-eminence of
time and the turmoil of human actions). She enters the realm of the immortal, becoming at one with
the ghost-like spirit of nature, an elemental being. This has the effect of subverting the typical ballad
ending, away from loss, sadness and remorse, and into an affirmation of the heroic spirit of solitude
with its echoes of infinity and eternity. This heroic lesson is the parable which little Lucy sets her
parents to learn. Having said this, Wordsworth’s poem manifests many of the traditional ballad
features: simple, musical rhythm, using deceptively plain diction, focused on an intensely dramatic
narrative. The poem is also set in conventional ballad metre: four lines alternating iambic tetrameter
and trimeter, rhymed ABAB. ‘Lucy Gray’ is essentially a species of cautionary tale and one which
Wordsworth moulds, extends and elevates, loading with metaphysical themes to breaking point. This
experiment with such a simple poetic form clearly runs the risk of buckling the lyric under its
metaphysical cargo. However, Wordsworth successfully manages to avoid this risk. One reason for
this success is that he underplays his themes, using the mystery of the narrative (including its
surrealistic ending) to provoke the reader into exploring deeper interpretations. His supple and highly
imaginative verse, too, with its hints and pointed impressions also suggest a dimension beyond a plain
account of a tragic death. For example, in the above extract, The storm came on before its time, She
wandered up and down, (29–30) the expressions ‘storm’, ‘before its time’ and ‘wandered’ function
colloquially but, as we see time and again in Wordsworth’s writing, he empowers his diction to work
both literally and figuratively often with little discernment between the two. This sort of semantic
economy is evident too in terms of imagery. I have already referred to there being many references to
time and action and these help to flag up the poem’s underlying themes of mortality and human
turmoil. At the same time they help to deepen a sense of urgency in the ballad, thereby intensifying
the drama of the tale too. References to light also figure strongly (see lines 15 and 24, for example),
suggesting the theme of enlightenment, and have their correlation in the large cluster of words
connected with ‘seeing’ (lines 3, 12, 35, 43, 59 and so on).

Two other points worth noting here are, on the one hand, references to bridges or to crossing (for
example in lines 2, 39, 42, 49, 52, 62) and, on the other, images of parts of the body. ‘Bridging’
endorses Lucy’s symbolic and moral role of bonding in addition to the idea of her ‘crossing over’ to the
other realm of elemental immortality. Conversely, references to parts of the body give vitality and
vividness to the actions of the poem (such as when Lucy takes up the lantern and her feet ‘disperse the
powdery snow’) – as well as reminding us of her mortal origins.

Consistent with traditional ballad form, the poem exudes a strong air of fatalism. Wordsworth’s use
of past tense from the very beginning and the starkly forbidding statement in line 12 give the whole
poem a mythic tenor, the tragedy doomed to be played out in each retelling. However, the switch to
present tense in the final section helps to stress Lucy’s immortality, the eternal in her new status as an
ever-living child. The supple flexibility of verb tense and the early disclosure of Lucy’s fate act to
moderate any tendencies to melodrama inherent in the events by distancing them from the reader.
They also witness the narrator’s firm control over the narrative, at the same time bolstering the plot,
while his explicit voice in the first and final sections works as a framing device around the events (and
the latter is a recurrent feature in Lyrical Ballads).

Wordsworth’s deft management is apparent too in his manipulation of the reader’s expectations.
This occurs frequently in his use of negatives: Lucy ‘Will never more be seen’ (12), ‘never reached’
(32), ‘nor ever lost’ (51), ‘further there were none’ (54) and now she ‘never looks behind’ (62).

It is not difficult to see that ‘Lucy Gray’ is an acutely subtle and expansive treatment of a simple
dramatic tale. Many of its themes are the major themes of Wordsworth’s poetry as a whole. For
example, most of the other ‘Lucy’ poems involve the image of a lost or doomed young girl, especially in
the sense, as here, of one crossing over to merge her human existence with that of nature’s extensive
soul. In ‘She dwelt among th’untrodden ways’ the subject’s unnerving solitude is underscored in the
images of the half-hidden violet and the solitary star (as well as literally in the absence of
companions). In fact Wordsworth’s fascination with her, her exceptionality, seems to subsist in this
very state of being overlooked or undiscovered, virginal. She is, like Lucy Gray, having no mate, ‘And
very few to love’.

Lucy Gray is in part defined by the negative words and ideas in which she is couched, a correlative
for her incompleteness as a developing adolescent. As such, the poem also stresses her eternal
juvenescence, intact and fixed. Making similar use of negative sculpting, ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’
goes even further as a Lucy poem (if indeed it does feature Lucy) and its complex finale again develops
the theme of the child coalescing with nature. In an uncanny atmosphere which is almost
supernatural, Lucy is again alive, beyond mortal life, beyond the ‘touch of earthly years’, fused into
and subject to the natural forces, ‘Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course’ (7). The atmosphere here is
uncanny because we can imagine the dead girl, with no will of her own, subject to the mysterious
forces of nature (and that troubling phrase ‘rolled round’ clearly points to this nullifying of the will,
the ‘spirit’ sealed). It is uncanny too because the corollary of her death and altered state is to induce in
the poet an uncomfortable realisation of the corpse-like slumber of his own spirit.

SUMMARY
Lucy Gray was a beautiful little girl who lived in a wild moor with her parents. Their house was
located in the countryside far away from the cities. Nobody neighbored their house and Lucy lived
without having any friends and playmates.

In Western countryside, it is said that if the moon is clearly seen during daylight, a storm appears in
that area. One-day Lucy’s mother went town for shopping in the noon. After a while, he father realized
that the moon can be seen and predicted a storm in few hours. He quickly told Lucy to take a lantern
and go to the town to help her mother. Lucy obeyed her father and was on her way to the city.

Unfortunately, the storm appeared as soon as Lucy left for the town. It started to snow thickly that
made it difficult for Lucy to see through. As she was wandering in the snowy atmosphere, she fell in a
crevice and died. Her mother somehow returned home at night.

When the little girl did not come back, her parents went out in the snowy mountains shouting for their
daughter, but they never found Lucy. On their way home, they found footprints on a wooden bridge in
the middle. They concluded that perhaps Lucy Gray fell down and had died.

When we go through the hills, a solitary song is heard in the wind, which echoes in the mountains.
Some people think that she died that day while some say she lives as a part of nature.

WHAT'S THE POEM "LUCY GRAY" BY WORDSWORTH ALL ABOUT?

'Lucy Gray' is a lyrical poem. It is based on the story of a young girl who lost her way in a snow storm.
She lived with her parents in a valley. She was a lonely girl as she had no friend and playmate. Yet she
was very playful and jolly. One stormy night, her father asked here to go to the town and bring her
mother home. She obeyed her father and went out with a lantern in her hand in a gay and happy
mood.
But unfortunately the sudden storm seized her and she lost her way in the mountains. Her parents
looked all night for the lost girl but could not find her. At daylight, they came upon a bridge where
they discovered Lucy's footprints.
'Into the middle of the plank
And further there were none'
The last two stanzas describe the popular belief that though Lucy Gray is dead, yet
'She is a living child'
And may be seen and heard. She sings 'a solitary song' that blends with the sound of the wind.

In this poem, the poet tries to explore the boundaries of life and death. He uses vivid symbolism to
explain this theme. The bridge, for example, symbolizes the transition from one state to other. It also
suggests that in leaving life, Lucy has been unified with Nature. She has become a part of it. The poet
does not stress upon Lucy's death. He, rather, tries to blend life and death in one continuous
movement.

WHAT IS A SUMMARY OF THE POEM "LUCY GRAY"?

Lucy Gray is the lyrical story of a very lonely girl, a lover of nature and apparently full of kindness and
innocence. She lived with her parents in a faraway valley, seemingly in isolation. Very bucolic:

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray,

And when I cross'd the Wild,
I chanc'd to see at break of day
The solitary Child.
No Mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wild Moor,
The sweetest Thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!
The conflict of the poem is that Lucy had to go to town, as a request from her father, go to look for her
mother who was there. The problem is that there came a snow storm, and she got lost in the snow.

Nobody could find her, but after looking around the bridge to town, they found her footprints. What is
poignant is that her innocence and love for nature supercede the tragic ending, and her being "Lucy
Gray" immortalized her, even in this moment. You can find this fact in the end of the poem where it
says:

'She is a living child,

and may be seen and heard

She sings a solitary song

that blends with the song of the wind

The symbolism in the story is the return to where we all come from : The onneness of Nature, which
awaits those whom loved and respected her through their innocence.

“TINTERN ABBEY”

"Tintern Abbey" is probably the most famous poem by one of the most famous British Romantic
poets. William Wordsworth was writing during the British Romantic period (critics always disagree
about how exactly to define the beginning and end of the Romantic period, but suffice to say that it
was from around 1785-1820). The Romantic period wasn't so named because the poets wrote a lot
about love, but because they were interested in Nature, Beauty, Truth, and all kinds of emotions that
you could capitalize to mark as Very Important. The Romantics included poets, novelists, and even
some philosophers and other non-fiction writers. In short, it was a complicated and many-sided
movement.
So our man Wordsworth was just one of many poets and writers producing work during this
relatively short period, but he stands out for a lot of reasons. First of all, he was one of the people who
really got the movement rolling. William Blake had already published his Songs of Innocence and Songs
of Experience (in 1789 and 1794), but honestly, no one really read them besides his close friends until
well after his death. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was a popular and commercial success, even
during his lifetime. In 1798, he published a slim little collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads with
his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge only contributed a few poems to the
volume (including "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "The Nightingale"). The majority of the
poems in the volume were by Wordsworth, and concluded with the oh-so-famous "Tintern Abbey."

And… boom. The Romantic movement really kicked off. The Lyrical Ballads were a huge hit, and the
"Preface" that Wordsworth wrote at the beginning of the volume turned into a kind of poetic
manifesto about what he and Coleridge were trying to do, poetically speaking. He said that they
wanted to write using "the real language of men," instead of the highfalutin language that poets have
been using since Day One. He also said he wanted to do away with the over-the-top metaphors and
figurative language that poets so often use. Again, this was because he claimed that real people never
actually talk that way. (What, don't you use elaborate extended metaphors all the time?)

But the Lyrical Ballads weren't just revolutionary in terms of the language they used; they also
changed the whole idea of what poetry could and should be about. Instead of writing about kings,
queens, dukes, and historical or mythological subjects, Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote most of the
poems in Lyrical Ballads about common people, like shepherds and farmers. Some of the poems are
even about the mentally ill or the mentally disabled, like "The Mad Mother," "The Idiot Boy," and "The
Thorn."

"Tintern Abbey" is a little bit different in that it's about the poet himself, rather than a shepherd or
distraught mother, but it is still representative of a lot of the changes Wordsworth wanted to make to
the way poetry was written. It's written about common things (enjoying nature during a walk around
a ruined abbey with his sister), and it uses a very conversational style with relatively simple
vocabulary. It also introduces the idea that Nature can influence, sustain, and heal the mind of the
poet. This idea also gets developed in The Prelude, a long, semi-autobiographical poem that
Wordsworth worked on in some form for his whole life.

Before William Wordsworth wrote "Tintern Abbey" and the rest of the Lyrical Ballads, literature, and
especially poetry, was written pretty exclusively for and about rich people. Sure, there are a few
exceptions, but that was the general trend. Wordsworth's mission (not unlike Shmoop's) was to open
up literature and to make it more accessible and enjoyable to normal, everyday people.

COMMENTARY

The subject of “Tintern Abbey” is memory—specifically, childhood memories of communion with

natural beauty. Both generally and specifically, this subject is hugely important in Wordsworth’s work,
reappearing in poems as late as the “Intimations of Immortality” ode. “Tintern Abbey” is the young
Wordsworth’s first great statement of his principle (great) theme: that the memory of pure communion with
nature in childhood works upon the mind even in adulthood, when access to that pure communion has been
lost, and that the maturity of mind present in adulthood offers compensation for the loss of that
communion—specifically, the ability to “look on nature” and hear “human music”; that is, to see nature with
an eye toward its relationship to human life. In his youth, the poet says, he was thoughtless in his unity with
the woods and the river; now, five years since his last viewing of the scene, he is no longer thoughtless, but
acutely aware of everything the scene has to offer him. Additionally, the presence of his sister gives him a
view of himself as he imagines himself to have been as a youth. Happily, he knows that this current
experience will provide both of them with future memories, just as his past experience has provided him
with the memories that flicker across his present sight as he travels in the woods.

“Tintern Abbey” is a monologue, imaginatively spoken by a single speaker to himself, referencing the
specific objects of its imaginary scene, and occasionally addressing others—once the spirit of nature,
occasionally the speaker’s sister. The language of the poem is striking for its simplicity and forthrightness;
the young poet is in no way concerned with ostentation. He is instead concerned with speaking from the
heart in a plainspoken manner. The poem’s imagery is largely confined to the natural world in which he
moves, though there are some castings-out for metaphors ranging from the nautical (the memory is “the
anchor” of the poet’s “purest thought”) to the architectural (the mind is a “mansion” of memory).

The poem also has a subtle strain of religious sentiment; though the actual form of the Abbey does not
appear in the poem, the idea of the abbey—of a place consecrated to the spirit—suffuses the scene, as
though the forest and the fields were themselves the speaker’s abbey. This idea is reinforced by the
speaker’s description of the power he feels in the setting sun and in the mind of man, which consciously
links the ideas of God, nature, and the human mind—as they will be linked in Wordsworth’s poetry for the
rest of his life, from “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free” to the great summation of the Immortality
Ode.

SUMMERY LINE BY LINE

LINES 58-61

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,

With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:

 The flashback is over. The speaker is back to talking about his impressions in his present visit
to the river Wye. This is marked in the poem by the "And now" that opens the stanza.
 The poet's memories of his first visit are being "revive[d]" by seeing everything again.
  In the process, though, he's experiencing "somewhat of a sad perplexity." In other words, he's
very "perplex[ed]," or confused, about how his present impressions match up with his "dim
and faint" recollections.
 Even though it's frustratingly "perplex[ing]," he finally manages to "revive," or reconstruct, the
"picture of the mind," and remember his earlier impressions.

LINES 62-65

While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years.

 The speaker looks out and takes in the view.

 He's pleased for two reasons at the same time. First, because that view is pretty spectacular in
the here and now. Second, because he's already thinking about how, sometime in the future,
he's going to look back on the memory of his present experience with enjoyment.

LINES 65-67

And so I dare to hope,

Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills;

 The speaker "hope[s]" that he'll live to look back on this moment with pleasure.
 Then he starts reflecting on how much he's changed since his first visit (five years before).

LINES 67-70

when like a roe

I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led:

 It's another flashback: the speaker is describing himself from five years ago.
 (To avoid confusion, we refer to the speaker's past self as "William," and his present, speaking
self as "the speaker").
 Back then, William leaped and "bounded" (68) all over the place like a "roe" (67), or deer – just
going "wherever nature led" (70).

LINES 70-72

more like a man

Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved.

 The speaker says that William, with all the "bound[ing]" around, seemed to be running away
from something, rather than chasing something "he loved" (72).
 The thing "he loved" is probably nature, but it's not clear who or what the speaker thinks
William was running from.

LINES 72-75

For nature then

(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.

 Here's another of those sentences divided up by a long parenthetical comment. The speaker
says nature meant everything to William.
 The parenthetical comment that breaks it up is somewhat ambiguous. The speaker says that
the "coarser" (73), less refined or sophisticated "pleasures" that William enjoyed as a boy, and
his "glad animal movements" (i.e., the innocent and unreflecting "bound[ing]" through the
mountains) are all over. But it's unclear whether the speaker is saying this about William, or
about his present self. It could be a combination of both.

LINES 75-76

– I cannot paint
What then I was.

 The speaker interrupts himself with a dash to claim that he can't describe his past self in
words. This is kind of ironic, given that that's exactly what he's doing, and what he's going to
continue to do.

LINES 76-83

The sounding cataract

Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours 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.

 The speaker has just said that nature was everything to William, and he does mean everything.
The "sounding cataract" (76), or waterfall, took the place of his "passion," and the "colours and
[…] forms" (79) of the "mountain" and the "wood" were his appetite.
 Nature supplied his "feeling" and "love," too – and without the need for intellectual "thought,"
since nature had enough "charm" and "interest" on its own.
 So nature, it seems, took the place of all of William's physical and emotional desires.
Interesting.

LINES 83-88

 The speaker can no longer experience the same "aching joys" (84) and "dizzy raptures" (85)
that William could; he can just remember them.
 The speaker isn't going to sweat it, though. He might not experience the "aching joys," but he
has "other gifts" (86) now that "recompence" (88), or make up for it.

LINES 88-93

For I have learned

To– 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 recompence.
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.

 But all that is now past.

 The speaker has matured beyond William's unreflecting, un-intellectual, "thoughtless"
appreciation of nature.
 Now, when he looks at nature, he's able to hear "the still, sad music of humanity," which seems
to mean that he can sense some universal, timeless connection between nature and all of
humanity.
 Wait. The speaker is looking at nature, but looking allows him to hear? Weird. The speaker's
senses are getting all mixed up.
 This "still, sad music," we're told, isn't "harsh" or "grating." It must be kind of pleasant, actually.
 The music is "power[ful]," though. It can "chasten and subdue" the speaker, or, in other words,
it can make him feel both humbled and calm.

LINES 93-99

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;

 When he hears the "still, sad music of humanity," the speaker says that he feels some kind of
"presence" – of what, we're not sure. Nature with a capital "N"? God? Some indefinable force of
good? See the "Themes" section for more on this.
 The "presence" (whatever it is) "disturbs" the speaker, but in a good way. The "presence"
makes the speaker lift his "thoughts" to higher things.
 The "presence" also gives the speaker a sense that there's "something" like a divine presence
that exists "deeply interfused," or blended in with everything around it.
 This "something" lives in "the light of setting suns" (97), in "the round ocean and the living air"
(98), in "the blue sky" (99), and even "in the mind of man" (99).
 This "something" sounds an awful lot like the "Force" in Star Wars. It exists in everything in
nature, surrounding us, filling us, and binding the universe together. Only we're not sure that
Wordsworth's "something" has a dark side.

LINES 100-102

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

 The speaker defines the "something" with a little more detail. It's "a motion and a spirit," that
"impels," or animates, all things that think, and that "rolls through all things" (102).
 He repeats the word "all" four times in two lines. He really wants to emphasize that this "spirit"
connects everything.
 The more we read, the more we're convinced that George Lucas read "Tintern Abbey" before
writing Star Wars.

LINES 102-107
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;

 This is why the speaker still considers himself a "lover" of nature. It's because he's figured out
that the "presence" (a.k.a. the "something" or the "motion" or the "spirit") connects everything.
 So the speaker loves everything "that we behold/ From this green earth" (104-5), everything
that you can sense with "eye, and ear" (106).
 "They," in line 106 refers back to the "eye and ear" from earlier in the line.
 So the speaker is saying that he loves what his "eyes and ears" "half create" (106) as well as
"what [they] perceive" (107).
 This is odd. We usually think of our sensory perception of the world – our vision and hearing –
as giving us hard facts about the world around us. But here, the speaker suggests that our "eyes
and ears" somehow "half create" the things that we see and hear.

LINES 107-111

well pleased to recognise

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.

 The speaker is happy to see the "presence" (a.k.a. the "something" or the "spirit") "in nature
and the language of the sense" (in other words, in his own sense perceptions).
 Only this time, the speaker comes up with yet more ways of referring to the "presence": he calls
it "the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,/ The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/
Of all my moral being" (109-111).
 The speaker seems to find it difficult to describe the "presence" he feels in nature. Up to this
point, he's described it as: "a presence" (94), "something" (96), "a motion and a spirit" (100),
"the anchor of my purest thoughts" (109), "the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart"
(109-110), and the "soul of all my moral being" (111).
 Clearly, this "presence" is very important to the speaker's spirituality if it's the "anchor" that
keeps his "thoughts" pure, as well as the "guardian of [his] heart" and the "soul" of his "moral
being."

LINES 111-113

Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:

 The final stanza opens with another gearshift. The speaker says that even if he weren't "thus
taught" – even if he hadn't learned about the "presence" in nature – he still wouldn't "suffer his
genial spirits to decay." In other words, he wouldn't allow his natural sympathy and kindness
to go to waste.

TINTERN ABBEY SYMBOLISM, IMAGERY & WORDPLAY

THE RIVER WYE

This is, after all, where the poem takes place: on the banks of the river Wye, looking out across the
river valley. The specific location is important, because the poem is about the speaker's changing
relationship to this spot on the river Wye. He visited it five years before, but now his impressions of it
are different.

Lines 55-57: The speaker says that, in anxious, sad moments, he "turned to" the river "in spirit" for
guidance and comfort. He apostrophizes the river by calling out to it, even though it obviously can't
respond to him in a literal way.

EYES AND VISION

The poem is mostly about how the speaker is able to compare what he sees with his eyes to the
memory of the scene he's been carrying around in his mind's eye (yes, we just used a metaphor!). The
literal eyeball is the barrier between the poet's mind and the scene in front of him. It's not surprising
that eyes, both literal and figurative, are important.

 Lines 82-3: The speaker is saying that when he was the young, boyish "William," his interest in
nature was purely visual. Nature had no "interest" for him that wasn't what he could see with
his "eye."
 Line 106: the speaker is saying that the "spirit" (100) in nature connects everything together,
which is why he's "a lover" (103) of all natural things that can be perceived with "eye, and ear"
(106). But then he goes on to say that the "eye and ear" are able to "half create" the things that
they "perceive." Wait, what? Does this mean that our eyes play tricks on us? Well, yes. And the
speaker is also suggesting that the "eye and ear" have a kind of consciousness that we're not
aware of, so that they "half create" without our even being aware of it.

OUT OF HIS SENSES

Vision (and hearing, to a lesser degree) is obviously important in this poem. But what about when the
speaker is so overwhelmed that his senses get all mixed up or even seem to leave him?

 Line 85: The speaker's past self, the boyish "William," used to feel so overwhelmed by the
beauty he saw that he would feel "dizzy."
 Line 90-1: The speaker has grown out of the tendency to fall into "dizzy raptures" (85). He
might not feel "dizzy" anymore, but his sensory perceptions seem to be misfiring. He has
learned how to "look" at something in order to "hear." Synesthesia, or the mixing up of
different senses, sometimes indicates that a character is close to overwhelmed.

SPEAKER POINT OF VIE W

The speaker of "Tintern Abbey" is the poet, William Wordsworth, himself. This isn't always the case.

Think about all the poems that use the first person, but for which the "I" doesn't necessarily represent

the historical poet (John Donne, we're looking at you).

There are a few clues in "Tintern Abbey" that tell us that the speaker is Wordsworth himself. First of

all, the full title of the poem tells us exactly where, when, and under what circumstances the poem was

written: "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye

during a Tour, July 13, 1798." So we know that the poet himself visited the spot along the "sylvan
Wye" (56), and that he'd been there at least once before (he say's he "revisiting" it). Plus, Wordsworth

actually had a sister (Dorothy) who lived with him for a lot of his adult life and who did travel with

him on his second trip to the Tintern area.

OK, so we're convinced that the speaker of "Tintern Abbey" is, in fact, the poet himself. So then why do

we keep calling him "the speaker" instead of calling him by his name? Because we have to keep the

speaker straight from the boyish past self that he describes in the poem. One of the major themes of

"Tintern Abbey" is the way that people change over time, so the speaker frequently refers to his past

self. This past self is fundamentally different from the person the speaker has become. To differentiate

the two, we refer to the speaker of the poem – the present-day Wordsworth – as "the speaker," and his

boyish past self as "William." He doesn't really imagine a future self. In the final stanza, he imagines

that he's already dead. Dorothy, his sister and the third "character" of the poem, could perhaps

represent his future self.

So what kind of person is the speaker? How is he different from the boyish "William"? The speaker

claims to be more mature. He's learned how to observe a divine "presence" (94) in nature that the

boyish "William" couldn't see because of his "thoughtless youth" (90). Hmm…if he weren't talking
about himself (or at least his past self), we might call the speaker kind of arrogant.

We'll withhold judgment, though. Let's see how he interacts with his sister. Wait, he hardly interacts

with her at all! We don't even know that she's with him until he addresses her in line 114. That's just

about three quarters of the way through the poem! OK, maybe he was too wrapped up in his own

impressions and recollections to talk to Dorothy until then. After all, sometimes we can be with people

we know really well for hours without exchanging a word.

The speaker tells Dorothy that she reminds him of the way he used to be. This would be kind of sweet,
except that he has already described his past self, the boyish "William," as "thoughtless."

TINTERN ABBEY THEME OF MAN AND THE NATURAL WORLD

This is one of the most important ideas of "Tintern Abbey." The speaker of this poem has discovered,
in his maturity, that his appreciation of natural beauty has allowed him to recognize a divine power in
nature. Wordsworth comes up with this idea in "Tintern Abbey," and then really explores and
develops it at length in his much (much) longer The Prelude. Nature means several things in the
context of this poem (and in most of Wordsworth's poetry, actually): it can mean 1) physical nature
(a.k.a. the Great Outdoors), or 2) it can mean the sense of unity or connection between everything
(a.k.a. the "Force" in Star Wars), or 3) it can refer to a divine "presence" in Nature, like Mother Nature.

Young William's enjoyment of nature is purely physical and unreflective; he is unable to access the
transcendental joy felt by his older counterpart because he has not allowed his "eye" to be "made
quiet" (47).Because reading poetry is always a thoughtful, reflective process, reading "Tintern Abbey"
is actually a better way of accessing the transcendental understanding of nature, which the speaker
attained only after years of calm reflection.

more like a man

Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. (70-72)
Thought: The speaker describes his younger self, the boyish William, running like crazy around the
mountains of Wales. Maybe the younger William did have a chip on his shoulder ("something he dreads")
from which he was trying to run away. Or maybe he was just running for the sake of running, with no
purpose at all, because he hadn't yet learned to appreciate nature intellectually.

For nature then

(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animalmovements all gone by)
To me was all in all. (72-75)
Thought: The "coarser pleasures" and the "glad animal movements" describes the younger William's crazy
running around from the more mature point of view of the speaker. Yes, he says, nature was everything to
him back then, but his "pleasures" were "coarser," or less sophisticated, than they are now.

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 harshnor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. (88-93)
Thought: Now the speaker has matured enough from his "thoughtless youth" to see beyond the immediate,
physical pleasure in a beautiful scene. He's able to see something wider and more universal ("the still, sad
music of humanity"), which helps to "chasten and subdue," or calm him down.

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. (100-102)
Thought: The speaker describes the "presence" that he has learned to detect in nature. It "impels," or
animates "all thinking things," and connects everything.

TINTERN ABBEY THEME OF TRANSFORMATION

"Tintern Abbey" is a nature poem, and nature is always full of transformations: fruit ripens, seasons
change...you get the picture. The poem describes the transformation between the young, boyish
"William" and the more mature speaker of the poem; it also imagines the future transformation that
will change the present Dorothy (Wordsworth's sister) into someone who will have the speaker's
deep appreciation for Nature.

The transformation of young William to the more mature speaker is brought about by his
recollections of the river Wye in moments of solitary reflection.

Although the speaker seems to include Dorothy in the system of transformation brought about by
recollections of nature, he is actually just projecting his own experiences onto her. The real Dorothy is
excluded from the system described by the speaker.

While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with the pleasing thoughts
That inthis moment there is life and food
For future years. (62-65)
Thought: As the speaker is standing on the banks of the Wye, soaking up the beauty he sees there, he
imagines that in "future years" he'll be able to turn to these memories with "pleasure." He imagines that he'll
continue to change and evolve as a result of his relationship with Nature.

And so I dare to hope,

Though changed, no doubt, from whatI was when first
I came among these hills; (65-67)
Thought: The speaker recognizes that he has "changed" since his first visit, although he might not have
recognized the transformation as it was taking place.

— I cannot paint
What then I was (75-76)
Thought: The speaker is now so far removed from his past self that he has trouble describing it. Or perhaps
he just has trouble putting it into words.

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; (83-87)
Thought: The speaker realizes that his innocent, unreflecting enjoyment of Nature is over. He has become
conscious of the "presence" in nature, and he can't go back to the way he was.