Memory and Nature: A Guide to William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey"

• The Poem
• Notes on Context
• Notes on Form
• Notes on Content
• Commentary and Quotations

“Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” like many of Wordsworth’s poems of this early part of his life, takes the form of a monologue in the first-person voice of the Poet, written in blank verse -- unrhymed iambic pentameter. Because the rhythm of many of the lines has subtle variations on the fundamental pattern of five iambic feet (da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM), and because there are no strict end-rhymes, the poem must have seemed like prose to its first readers, who were accustomed to the strict metrical and rhyming forms and the elevated poetic diction of 18th century Neo-Classical poets like Alexander Pope and Thomas Gray.

Instead of an obvious rhyme scheme, Wordsworth worked many more subtle echoes into his line endings:

“springs ... cliffs”
“impress ... connect”
“trees ... seem”
“sweet ... heart”
“behold ... world”
“world ... mood ... blood”
“years ... matured”

And in a few places, separated by one or more lines, there are full rhymes and repeated end-words, which create a special emphasis simply because they are so rare in the poem:

“thee ... thee”
“hour ... power”
“decay ... betray”
“lead ... feed”
“gleams ... stream”

One further note about the poem’s form: In just three places, there is a mid-line break, between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next. The meter is not interrupted -- each of these three lines is five iambs -- but the sentence break is signified not only by a period, but also by an extra vertical space between the two parts of the line, which is visually arresting and marks an important turn of thought in the poem.