This poem was composed at Goslar in 1799 as part of the first book of
_The Prelude_ (published in 1850). It was first printed in Coleridge's
periodical _The Friend_, in December, 1809, with the instructive though
pedantic title, "Growth of Genius from the Influences of Natural Objects
on the Imagination, in Boyhood and Early Youth." It appeared in
Wordsworth's poems of 1815 with the following title:--"Influence of
Natural Objects in calling forth and strengthening the Imagination in
Boyhood and Early Youth."
The opening verses of this poem are still another instance of the
identification of God with nature. As Mr. Stopford Brooke writes, "we
are here in contact with a Person, not with a thought. But who is this
person? Is she only the creation of imagination, having no substantive
reality beyond the mind of Wordsworth? No, she is the poetic
impersonation of an actual Being, the form which the poet gives to the
living Spirit of God in the outward world, in order that he may possess a
metaphysical thought as a subject for his work as an artist."
_The Lines Composed above Tintern Abbey_ contain the highest expression
which Wordsworth has given to this thought, To the heedless animal
delight in nature had succeeded a season in his youth when the beauty and
power of nature "haunted him like a passion," though he knew not why.
The "dizzy rapture" of those moods he can no longer feel. Yet,
"Not for this
Faint I nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe
Abundant recompense. 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 harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. _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:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things_."
In ll. 42-46, of _The Influence of Natural Objects_, we have an
inimitable Wordsworthian effect. Into the midst of his wild sport the
voice of Nature steals, and subdues his mind to receive the impulses of
peace and beauty from without. We involuntarily think of the boy he has
celebrated, his playmate upon Windermere, who loved to rouse the owls
with mimic hootings, but
"When a lengthened pause
Of silence came and baffled his best skill,
Then sometimes, in that silence while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind,
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake."
_The Prelude_, v. 379 f.