J. Brueske   

something to respect. But in the 18 ^th century a new middle-class formed itself in the cities. The workers longed for recreation outside of the grey and crowded cities and found the possibility for it in nature (cf. Moore). Romantic poets treated nature in their poems as something adorable and true; they found in it the place for self-realisation and transcendence for their souls.

Wordsworth and Coleridge both centred most of their poems around natural themes. Nevertheless, they acted out of different motivations. While Wordsworth thinks of nature as an essential part of human life, especially in childhood, Coleridge associates the experience in nature as something special, as the ideal in the real, as part of the imagination. The different childhood of these two poets underlie this attitude.

Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth in 1770 and grew up in a rural place, spending most of his childhood playing in nature. Later on he would travel a lot with his family, hiking or climbing in the mountain of France or Switzerland. Therefore he was always surrounded by nature (cf. Roe, 6). He believed this was a crucial point of growing up and later on he always said, he referred back to his childhood memories when writing his poems. The same is true for his very famous poem Tintern Abbey.

Wordsworth wrote Tintern Abbey in July 1798, as it says in the title, and it was published in the same year in a poem collection of himself and Coleridge, the Lyrical Ballads (cf. Roe, 268). It is one of Wordsworth’s most famous poems. He contributed it to the Lyrical Ballads just before the publishing date and it was a special one because he had not revised it after having it written once (cf. Brett, 296). The poem reflects Wordsworth’s attitude towards nature as well as his own relationship to it.

The poem begins with the speaker telling us that „five years have past“ (l.1) since he had been in that beautiful location in nature. This alone tells us that the speaker refers to some nature experience from the past and now celebrates its remembrance. Wordsworth also was

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J. Brueske   

“continuously inspired and let into transcendent moments by his experiences in Nature” (Rider). He describes what he sees and what effects those things have on him: the scene “impress/thoughts of more deep seclusion” (ll.6-7). The speaker goes on by telling the reader about his years of absence. While he was in the “’mid the din/of towns and cities, I have owed to them” (ll.25-26). In Wordsworth’s opinion only people who lived their life in unity with nature, which excluded the people living in the cities, could keep purity from childhood. The memories of this place of nature has influenced the speaker in all his actions, he goes on, and has also supported him with the “blessed mood” (l.37). Through nature “we see into the life of things” (l.49) and therefore it offers us a place of transcendence and appreciation. During the years the speaker has been absent, he has learned “to look on nature, not as in the hour/of thoughtless youth” (ll.89-90), but to think of it as something that has given him the prerequisites for the adult life and that should still be worshipped. He goes on by praising nature’s power and expresses how thankful he is: “Therefore am I still/A lover of the meadows and the woods/And mountains; and all of that we behold/From this green earth” (ll.102-105).

Roe claims that Tintern Abbey is “a hymn to the One Life in nature” (Roe, 269) and it really seems like Wordsworth believes that a life without experiencing nature would not be useful and worthwhile to anybody. He also feels that “Nature never did betray/The heart that loved her” and therefore refers to it as a very loyal and faithful friend. But of course, he always had the opportunity to be surrounded by nature. He could sacrifice his whole life to it and the same he wished for his children. The other wish, that is expressed in the poem, namely that nature shall be “The guide, the guardian of heart, and soul/Of all moral being” (ll.110-111), was a wish Wordsworth shared with his companion Coleridge (cf. Roe, 274). But else than Wordsworth, for Samuel Coleridge this belief rather stayed a wish than being fulfilled reality. Coleridge grew up in the city of London, where he had to live because his

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