THE SPIRTUAL COMFORT OF NATURE IN WILLIAMS WORDSORTH’S “LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY” ? The spirituality and influence of nature in William Wordsworth’s "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," explains the impact of and comfort provided by nature throughout his life. As Wordsworth grows older, he tries to share this with his sister. Using the moon as a metaphor for his older (evening) stage in life, he tells her “Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;” It is as though he is saying that if you are one with nature, you are never alone. Wordsworth shares with his ister that even though he can no longer physically participate with the beauty of nature, that his mature, adult mind still finds comfort in childhood memories; and it can do that same for her.
He explains to her that even when he is far from the Abbey, he can still see and hear and feel the beauty of nature. He reflects upon his memories to help him maintain perspective and peace in everyday life. Because he finds spirituality and meaning through nature, both in his reflections on his youth and in how he experiences nature as an adult, he believes it will also be essential to the spiritual well being of his ister, even after he has left the earthly world. Support Paragraph one about memories: "wild ecstacies shall be matures Into a sober pleasure"; Thy memory shall be a dwelling place for all sweet sounds and memories the absolute happiness and recollection of pleasant emotions The speaker wants Dorothy to experience nature the way that William experienced it five years ago. He wants her to have the same "wild ecstasies" (138) that William did. That way, when Dorothy "mature[s]" (138) the way he did, her "pleasure" in nature will become "sober" (139), too – just like the speaker!Just as the "beauteous forms" (22) stayed alive in the speaker's memory after William's boyish "bound[ing]" (68), so too will Dorothy's "mind" (139) become a "mansion for all lovely forms" (140).
In other words, Dorothy's memory will be like a huge scrapbook of this visit, just as the speaker's memory was a scrapbook of his past visit five years ago. Support Paragraph two maintain perspective and peace: " If Solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy shall remember meIf all this happens – if Dorothy's mind gets turned into a scrapbook of her current impressions – then, later on, "if solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief" (143) should bother her, she'll be able to look into the scrapbook of her memory and have "healing thoughts" (144) that will make her feel better. Specifically, the "thoughts" that will "heal" her will be her memories of how her brother, the speaker, stood next to her with his "exhortations" (146), or encouragements. The speaker imagines that Dorothy's memories of these "beauteous forms" (22) will work to soothe her in the future, just as his memories of them soothed him in the past.Support Paragraph three spiritual well being, and comfort when he is gone: "If I should be where I can no more hear thy voice.
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that on the banks of this delighful stream we stood together.....
. The "gleams/ Of past existence" (148-9) that the speaker is seeing in Dorothy's "wild eyes" are his recollections of the way William reacted to things, because Dorothy's present reactions are so similar (like in lines 116-120). Now the speaker imagines a future after he has died, after he is "where [he] no more can hear/ Thy voice" (147-8).This could just mean that he's imagining a future when they're not together anymore, but it seems more dramatic to imagine that it's after he's dead and she's still alive. He asks Dorothy if she'll forget having "stood together" (151) on the banks of the Wye after he's gone.
The question continues in line 151. He asks if she'll forget that her brother ("I," line 151), who has loved Nature for "so long" (151), had come back "hither" (152) to the banks of the Wye with an even deeper love of nature than he felt before. The speaker doesn't need an answer to his question; of course she won't forget!He seems to forget that he had started out by phrasing it as a question. The sentence beginning on line 155, "Nor wilt thou then forget" means "and you won't forget this either! " She won't forget, he says, that after all of his "wanderings" and the "many years/ Of absence" (156-7), the view from the banks of the Wye are even more precious to him than they were before – both for its own sake (because it's pretty) and for her sake. The speaker imagines Dorothy's mind and memory using house metaphors. Her mind will be a "mansion," and her memory a
