Wordsworth

• Roles of author, text, reader
• Theory of poetry from Lyrical ballads
• Poetry originates in a spontaneous overflow of strong feeling. Emotion recollected in tranquility

Tintern Abbey

• Was there 5 years ago
• Beauty of nature
• Nature comes to me when I am in the city and restores me
• It will sustain him in the future
• Nature was everything to me when I was young
• Now he has a more mature view of nature
• He was thoughtless as a youth but now he isn't thoughtless
• His beloved sister is with him
• Nature is his guide to morals

Author - poets are born, not made. Superior imaginations. Great truth tellers, gratify the reader
Text - scenes from common life in common language
Reader - determines the truth of the poem, challenges the reader to become sensitive and skillful enough to fill in gaps

Preface

• The poems were an experiment

Intimations of Immortality

• Life was beautiful and great but now he feels sad.
• Then realizes he shouldn't let his mood destroy nature.
• He goes back and forth between thinking its great and thinking its sad
• Life is a dim shadow of an earlier, purer existence dimly recalled in childhood and then forgotten in the process of growing up.
• The philosophical mind has enabled him to understand nature in deeper terms than when he was a child.
• Pre-existence
• Stanza 1
• The world and nature were beautiful, celestial and fresh. Now he can't see things like he used to
• Stanza 2
• The rainbow and the rose and the moon are beautiful but the narrator knows the glory has passed away from the earth
• The moon is personified
• Stanza 3
• The birds and the lambs were happy but he had grief
• Something was said to him and then he was happy again.
• Everything is happy and he won't let his grief ruin the mood again.
• He wants the child of Joy, the shepherd boy to play with him.
• Stanza 4
• He sees the blessed creatures rejoicing and it would be evil if he was sullen when Earth is adorning.
• Children and babies are happy.
• Yet he can still tell that something is gone
• Stanza 5
• We come from God (pre-existence) and glory trails with us. Heaven is with us as babies. 
• Prison-house begins to close on us as we grow.
• At length man perceives it die away
• Stanza 6
• Earth tries to be a mother and makes us forget about heaven
• Stanza 7
• Children are born and their parents dote on them
• They grow up playing games that are imitations of adults
• He acts lots of different adult parts
• Stanza 8
• Don't be so quick to grow up
• Stanza 9
• Thankful that he still questions
• Joy that he can remember
• Stanza 10
• So be glad shepherds and lambs mentioned in beginning! Nothing can bring back the hour of splender in the graves of glory in the flower but grieve not for now we have the philosophic mind
• Stanza 11
• I love nature even more now that I see it maturely
• Splender of the grass, glory in the flower