what she said

Things I wish I had written…

This is the first of a million poems, novels and stories I wish I’d written, but this is especially important - to me at least. I have always been interested in Romantic (emphasis on the capital ‘R’ as my old english teacher used to say) literature ever since I heard a reading of Keats’ poem ‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’ at a festival when I was 14. There was something in it, something that struck me, that inescapable but impossible sensation when you hear or read something that fills you up with, perhaps enlightenment is an appropriate word in this case. You see things differently in that instant and everything feels simple, as though you should have known it all along. Keats’ sonnet is as despairing as it is beautiful, but I suppose those are two of the defining features of Romantic poetry.

I went on to go backwards - I started with Keats, then Shelley. I studied Lord Byron at 6th Form, who is as an individual and a writer a personal hero of mine, and then at University I stumbled quite accidentally into a module named ‘Lyrical Ballads’. I was of course aware of Coleridge and Wordsworth having studied them at various points in my academic career, but this, this was different. My tutor was evidently passionate on the subject and the course was a new one that year, so inevitably there was a sense of license and liberty - no one quite knew what we were going to do or how. But he shaped the course around the shifting form of Lyrical Ballads. Now, I wouldn’t call myself a cynic, but I was by no means convinced by the concept of ‘the sublime’ that Wordsworth especially was so enamoured by, even the reading of Keats’ didn’t quite suggest that. Or maybe it did, I just failed to recognise it.

Anyway, we continued to read, review and in Wordsworth’s words, ‘murder to dissect’ each poem in the collection. And as every week went by it began to dawn on me. These weren’t poems of solidity - you couldn’t take hold of them and feel the edges - even those rustic poems about lowly country folk - they had a visceral quality unlike any poetry I’d ever encountered. And I must admit, the cliche stands; after reading ‘Tintern Abbey’ for the first time I felt like I was floating - I could see what Wordsworth was describing. Not just the scene - the grasp of time, of the brief pulsing moment that can define how we look back on our lives.

Now this may seem very vague and airy and as I said before, it comes across as cliche, but I’m not embarrassed by it. I feel honoured that something that those two great men created over 300 years ago has travelled across time, and with regards to Tintern Abbey, that a feeling of sublime, of understanding and enlightment has travelled with it and stirred a humble, obscure young woman to the same heights. So this is a thank you to both of them.

Here is the poem itself - try reading, whether curled up at home or on a hilltop - and just feel it.

Five years have past; 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,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view 10 These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Among the woods and copses lose themselves,
Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,
With some uncertain notice, as might seem, 20 Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermit’s cave, where by his fire
The hermit sits alone.


                                     Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
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 30 With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight 40 Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten’d:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

50                                                 If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft,
In darkness, and amid the many shapes
Of joyless day-light; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart,
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee
O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the wood
How often has my spirit turned to thee!


And now, with gleams of half-extinguish’d though[t,]
With many recognitions dim and faint, 60 And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was, when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, 70 Wherever nature led; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by,)
To me was all in all.—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 80 An appetite: a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour 90 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, 100 A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,*
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 110 The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.


                                     Nor, perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me, here, upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
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. Oh! yet a little while 120 May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; ‘tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 130 Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our chearful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee: and in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind 140 Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; Oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance,
If I should be, where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence, wilt thou then forget 150 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: rather say
With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake. 160