Response to Tintern Abbey

The idea that a past memory of a place effects the way you see that same place in the present is something we don't think about often, but it's extremely prevalent in the way we interact with the world around us. Usually we don't notice because these places that exist in our memory are places that we interact with on a regular basis but, as Wordsworth shows, when these places have a great impact on us and we haven't seen them in a long time, we can be surprised with how reality compares and contrasts with our memory.

"Though the absent long,/ These forms have not been to me,/ As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:"

The place had such a significant impact on on the speaker that he kept the images of it in his head as something to bring him comfort. "How oft in spirit I have turned to thee."

But as he stands in the real presence of this place that has been existing in his memory for so long, the two images seem not necessarily contrasting, but the reality is not as affirming as the memory. "With many recognitions dim and faint,/ And somewhat of a sad perplexity".

In the end he seems to conclude that the way the place existed in his mind before returning to it didn't negatively affect the way he sees it in real time, but it made him recognize what memory can do for a person. "If I should be, where I no more can hear/ Thy voice, nor catch from they wild eyes these gleams/ Of past existence, wilt thou then forget...We stood together...rather say/  With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal/ Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget".

Memory brings comfort and allows a person to actively experience things that are not physically accessible. People may dies and places may change, but memories are constant.

What is it about the Wye that makes this place such a vivid memory?

By the end of the poem, the speaker is concerned with how place affects the memories people have of each other, specifically how his sister would remember him should he die, so is it the place that creates the memory or the person? Is the place simply a catalyst for remembering the person or is the place significant on its own?

-Heather Philpot