Wordsworth

Wordsworth’s writing encompasses this belief; at birth we are in our highest state of innocence and throughout life we become corrupted and fall into a state of experience. He paints this portrait for us in his two titles “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798” and “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” The subjective and meditative lyrical poem “Intimations …

…the feeling of love. As his soul has made the journey into maturation, what he thinks of as the death of the soul, he is no longer able to see things in nature through the eyes of innocence. He longs for the “truths that wake” (789), that are present in “Intimations of Immortality.” Though both poems celebrate the wisdom that comes with experience, “Tintern Abbey” does not have the scene of redemption and revisitation to innocence.