William Wordsworth’s
exemplary romantic poem “Tintern Abbey” incorporates an incredibly large and varied number of words suggesting
remembrance. Since the poem often focuses on memories of the past, the word “remember” could have proved repetitious and
monotonous. Yet the actual word remember appears only once in the poem, and Wordsworth demonstrates his
eloquent tactics of variation without overusing this particular word.
At the start, the narrator of “Tintern Abbey” immediately informs the reader that five years have passed since he was here before.
Five years have passed;
five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! And again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.- Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs...
The use of the word “again” here implies that the narrator has returned to a beautiful scene he’d once enjoyed years before. The reader immediately understands that the memory of the place remains strong in the narrator’s mind. The word “again” appears twice more in the first verse paragraph. Combined with the lines recounting the scene’s splendor and its peaceful pastoral ambiance, “again” implies that the individual experiences a long-missed place and remembers how similar the scene appeared five years ago.
In the following paragraph Wordsworth uses a wonderful word not immediately considered close to “remember,” but adds to the verse wonderfully to suggest the speaker’s reflective mindset. He uses the word “felt.”
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:- feeling too
Of unremembered pleasure...
“Felt” here brilliantly indicates that the speaker remembered the scene at times when he was not there. In rooms sitting alone he could remember the landscape and could feel it flowing through his blood and through his heart as though it had become a part of him, which would return him to a more serene state of being. His memory of the banks helps to soothe his disturbing thoughts of loneliness and unrest. Also, when he speaks about returning to the thoughts of “unremembered pleasure,” the narrator actually says that he does remember the pleasure. In this case, Wordsworth uses the negative of remember in order to convey remembrance.
Wordsworth continues to review the scenery surrounding him, and recalls his younger days and how the exquisite place felt different to him then.
—I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite...
Here the speaker remembers his youth and how he saw the scene differently at that time. The use of the word “haunted” here superbly implies a memory; he remembered the sounds of the rushing cataract amd he was haunted by it. The memory followed him like a specter, fantastic and frightening, a romantic implication of the sublime with the image of the waterfall.
In a following section of the poem, the words “former” and “read” show up to indicate a moment of remembrance.
My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes...
The speaker explains that through his companion’s voice and through her eyes, he can remember the “pleasures” of his past. The word read here eloquently replaces remember, and Wordsworth describes a romantic recollection in an inventive manner. Through the companion’s eyes.
At the end of “Tintern Abbey,” in a section where the speaker talks to the person with him on the banks, Wordsworth suggests remembrance with an antonym of the word: “forget.” “Forget” shows up twice in the verse, along with the phrase “gleams of past existence,” which also indicates a memory.
If I should be, where I can no more hear
Thy voice, not catch from thy wild eyes the gleams
Of past existence, wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
Unwearied in that service...
The speaker of the poem converses with his sister, Dorothy, at his side, hoping that she will take in the beauty of the banks and remember the scene that they are standing in. He does not want her to “forget” the romantic setting in years to come. Also, when he looks into her eyes he remembers his youthful days, he refers to it as “gleams of past existence,” creatively using “gleams” as a word for remembering. Her eyes contain gleams of his happy past and he does not want her to forget that moment of her youth. He wants her to remember joyfully as he remembered.
Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” a graceful and powerful romantic poem, covers both the sublime and the beautiful with the subject of thought and remembrance. The idea of remembrance arises numerous times and conveyed with an assortment of other words besides remember. Wordsworth wonderfully brings the idea of memory to life with his creative variations of words suggesting memory. With this poem, the renowned writer definitely proves that he deserves the name “Wordsworth,” creating a poetic ideal that defines the term romantic.