A Critical Study of Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey as a Healing Prayer

Abstract

William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (1798), commonly known as Tintern Abbey, is one of the most celebrated poems of English Romanticism. The poem is often interpreted as a spiritual meditation that elevates nature to the status of a sacred, healing force. Through this paper I want to discuss Tintern Abbey as a healing prayer—a poem filled with poetic utterance that combines the healing effects of gratitude, reflection, and intercession on human being. Wordsworth invokes nature as a divine presence that restores human consciousness, grants moral strength, and provides transcendental solace in times of despair. Tintern Abbey is a poem of self-disclosure. It does not follow the qualities of a traditional religious prayer, but it bears all the qualities of a prayer which include reverence, thanksgiving, memory and blessing. Tintern Abbey can be called a literary prayer that speaks in volumes to the universal human desire for connection, healing, and hope while also being in alignment with Romantic notions of natural spirituality through his own thoughts and his impassioned letter to his sister Dorothy. This paper examines the healing effect of Tintern Abbey different perspectives like Wordsworth's love and care for Dorothy, the serenity and blissfulness of the landscape, the hymns of thankfulness, spiritual effect of nature etc. This research presents Tintern Abbey as a timeless spiritual work, a healing prayer that still speaks to its readers who are looking for solace in their relationship with nature in different ways.