Tintern Abbey: Motifs

Vision and Hearing

Vision and hearing come up several times in the poem. Significantly, though, Wordsworth’s references to these faculties aren’t just about ordinary sense perception. They are also about a more refined, almost spiritual type of perception. In the case of the eyes, the speaker describes a type of vision that goes beyond mere appearances and enables the viewer to “see into the life of things” (line 49). The speaker describes how his own lifelong experiences with the natural world have enabled him to develop “an eye made quiet by the power / Of harmony, and the deep power of joy” (lines 47–48). It is precisely this type of uniquely perceptive sight that the speaker identifies in his sister, whose “wild eyes” he mentions twice, in lines 119 and 148. The speaker insists that seeing into the life of things requires the pairing of visual perception with the imagination. The same goes for the faculty of hearing, which, together with vision, produces a whole “world” of perception (lines 105–107):

the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive

Alongside deep seeing there is thus also a deep listening. This listening can perceive the “sad music of humanity” (line 91) and create memories that later form “a dwelling-place / For all sweet sounds and harmonies” (141–42).

“Again”

The speaker uses the word “again” with unusual frequency. The word appears five times in the poem, though four of those instances come in the first fifteen lines:

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters. . . .
Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs. . . .
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore. . . .
Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows

On a practical level, the frequent use of “again” in these lines reflects the simple fact that the speaker is revisiting a familiar landscape. As such, he’s providing a catalog of the landscape’s various sights and sounds he is now seeing “again.” Yet the recurring utterance of this word also has a subtle foreshadowing effect, alerting the reader almost subliminally to the importance of the memory. For as we discover as we continue to read, the poem concerns itself principally with the recuperative power of recollection. And as the etymology of that word indicates, re-collection refers to the mental act of calling something to mind again. The speaker explicitly announces his thematic concern with memory in the second verse paragraph, but not until the fourth verse paragraph does the word “again” appear (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 initial four uses of “again” culminate in these lines, where the speaker embarks on a lengthy memoir about how the time he’s spent outdoors has shaped him.

“Oh!”

The speaker cries out “oh!” at four points in the poem. The word oh is an interjection that has several uses in the English language. For instance, it can be used to express an emotion, such as surprise or desire. Alternatively, it can be used to make a direct address, to indicate understanding. The speaker uses this interjection in each of these senses. “Oh!” first appears in the second verse paragraph (lines 49–56):

If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft—
. . .
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods

Here, his use of “oh!” reflects the longing he felt for this landscape in the time he was away from it. Later, when he turns to his sister, the speaker says “oh!” three more times. In one instance, he seems to use “oh!” both as an address to his sister and an expression of the pleasure he takes in their relationship (lines 119–21):

Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister!

In another instance, he uses “oh!” in a way that expresses agony at the thought that his sister should have to endure any kind of suffering (lines 142–43):

oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion

Finally, he uses “oh!” to communicate a deep sense of understanding (lines 154–55):

oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love

Though used in different senses, each instance of “oh!” in the poem signals a sudden burst of emotion and shift of thought.

Previous section Themes Next section Symbols