The Wordsworth family plot at St. Oswald\u2019s Church, in the Lake District village of Grasmere. We have, of course, made our pilgrimage here. Several times. \u00a0\u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A few nights ago, as we watched the 2008 WGBH (Boston)\/BBC\u00a0Sense and Sensibility<\/em>, the one with Hattie Morahan as Elinor Dashwood, I heard a quotation from William Wordsworth\u2019s\u00a0\u201cLines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern\u00a0Abbey\u201d (or, to be more full and exact, from Wordsworth\u2019s\u00a0\u201cLines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern\u00a0Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798\u201d). \u00a0That led me to re-read the poem yet again, and to be struck, yet again, by this passage, in which the poet tells how he has moved from a simple youthful veneration of wild nature to a perception that nature somehow points to something vast, perhaps something divine, beyond itself.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2014 I cannot paint<\/span>
\n What then I was. The sounding cataract<\/span>
\n Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,<\/span>
\n The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,<\/span>
\n Their colours and their forms, were then to me<\/span>
\n An appetite; a feeling and a love,<\/span>
\n That had no need of a remoter charm,<\/span>
\n By thought supplied, not any interest<\/span>
\n Unborrowed from the eye.\u2014 That time is past,<\/span>
\n And all its aching joys are now no more,<\/span>
\n And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this<\/span>
\n Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur: other gifts<\/span>
\n Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,<\/span>
\n Abundant recompense. For I have learned<\/span>
\n To look on nature, not as in the hour<\/span>
\n Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes<\/span>
\n The still, sad music of humanity,<\/span>
\n Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power<\/span>
\n To chasten and subdue. And I have felt<\/span>
\n A presence that disturbs me with the joy<\/span>
\n Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime<\/span>
\n Of something far more deeply interfused,<\/span>
\n Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,<\/span>
\n And the round ocean, and the living air,<\/span>
\n And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:<\/span>
\n A motion and a spirit, that impels<\/span>
\n All thinking things, all objects of all thought,<\/span>
\n And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still<\/span>
\n A lover of the meadows and the woods,<\/span>
\n And mountains; and of all that we behold<\/span>
\n From this green earth; of all the mighty world<\/span>
\n Of eye, and ear,\u2014 both what they half create,<\/span>
\n And what perceive; well pleased to recognise<\/span>
\n In nature and the language of the sense<\/span>
\n The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,<\/span>
\n The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul<\/span>
\n Of all my moral being.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Maybe it\u2019s the landscape around me now, the landscape that I just saw coming in on the plane, that\u2019s reminding me of Wordsworth and England\u2019s Lake District . . .<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Las Vegas, Nevada<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 A few nights ago, as we watched the 2008 WGBH (Boston)\/BBC\u00a0Sense and Sensibility, the one with Hattie Morahan as Elinor Dashwood, I heard a quotation from William Wordsworth\u2019s\u00a0\u201cLines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern\u00a0Abbey\u201d (or, to be more full and exact, from Wordsworth\u2019s\u00a0\u201cLines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern\u00a0Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Wordsworth's](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/06\/Wordsworth_family_plot.jpg\")
<\/a>