Wales Day 5: boring poetry

Does the name William Wordsworth mean much to you?  It doesn't to me, but it should -- because he's someone that all English majors read -- not quite up there with Shakespeare, but on the next tier down.  I've read him, so I knew who he was.  (A poet who helped launch the Romantic era in literature).  But I struggle to feel appropriately moved when I read him.

He wrote probably his most famous poem at this place, Tintern Abbey.  We visited it on our way home from Wales on Day 5.  It's a ruin now, thanks to Protestantism - well, actually, thanks to Henry VIII, who took it for himself in 1536 under the name of Protestantism.  (He's also the one who had six wives and -- well, never mind.)

Anyway, Wordsworth found the roofless abbey inspiring so he wrote a sentimental poem about it, cunningly titled "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey."  It's in dozens of anthologies and textbooks.

As usual, I was skeptical about the poem and the place.  Tourist trap for poetry lovers.  Well...

Surprisingly, ruined churches are even better than un-ruined ones, or at least this one was.  I said to my roommate, "Actually, I can sort of see why Wordsworth liked this place."

All right.  That's an understatement.  I loved it.  In fact, I felt appropriately moved to climb up into one of the windows and write my own poem:

Here's the poem.  It's sentimental and juvenile and whatnot, so I was going to keep it to myself, but then -- why not?

Lines Composed at Tintern Abbey

I look down on grass floor and up at

                blue ceiling,

This sanctuary, once like Christ Church cathedral

                or St. Paul’s,

Better now, and more beautiful, worshipful, reverent

                because open to the sky and ground

                and wooded hills beyond.

The stained glass is gone, and I am glad, because

                it shut off the better and lovelier things outside that

                God made.

Why so beautiful?  I do not understand why

                crumbled rock against grey winter trees

                causes these thoughts.

I cannot do it justice, but I know now that

                Tintern Abbey is not great because

other people have come here and made it so,

                or because Wordsworth stood here.

None of that matters.  He came here first and

                wrote because it is beautiful,

In the way that the mountain ridge outside my

                window at the hamlet was the same

                to me when I sat in that windowsill

and wrote as I sit here and write now,

                And as the tree line and fingernail moon

and chicken shed are the same from my bedroom window at

                home in Nebraska.

(March 13, 2013)

[photo credits to Austin, Brittany]