Friendship in Wordsworths Tintern Abbey :: English Literature Essays

Friendship in Wordsworths Tintern AbbeyOf all the topics Wordsworth covered in his poetic lifetime, friendship stands out as a key occupation. His own personal friendship with Coleridge led to the co-writing of melodious Ballads in 1789. The poem On Friendship, written to Keats after an argument in 1854, states, Would that we could make amends / And evermore be better friends. In Lines compose a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, we find the purest expression of Wordsworths bewitchment with friendship. Written on the banks of the Lye, this beautiful lyric has been said by novice Robert Chinchilla to pose the question of friendship in a fashion more central, more profound, than any other poem of Wordsworths since The Aeolian Harp of 1799 (245). Wordsworth is writing the poem to his sister Rebecca as a style of healing their former estrangement. Rebecca Wordsworth was, as many a(prenominal) writers bugger off pointed out, distressed at Wordsworths refusal to hold a full-time joblik e many a youth after him, Wordsworth was living the carefree life of the artist. Rebecca treasured him put to rights. He should become an adult now. Tintern Abbey is Wordsworths attempt to apologize himself to Rebecca, but also, in crucial ways, to himself. As the poem opens, Wordsworth is standing a few miles above the ruined Tintern Abbey. He states Five years have past quintuplet summers, with the length Of five long winters and again I collect These water, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft island murmur. Despite his position, Wordsworth can hear the soft island murmur of the mountain springs. As five long winters suggests, Wordsworth is frigidity and drearyLondon, we must remember, is a bitter place. He longs for the islands the sand, sun, and warm waters that those murmurs suggest. The coldness of winter could be brought about by Rebeccas surpass from her brother they had been, at the time of the poems writing, separate for five long years. But he can hear reconciliation approaching just at the edge of hearing he can stop the horizon of friendship. But no sooner does friendship appear in the poem than it is thwarted by these lines Green to the very door and wreaths of corporation Sent up, in silence, from among the trees With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some cave dwellers cave, where by his fire The Hermit sits alone.