Wordsworth's Nature Never Did Betray

William Wordsworth · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 2 pages

Two pages carrying thirteen lines from Wordsworth's Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, line 123 onwards, printed as a single verse paragraph with the source identified in a footnote.

The passage states a confidence rather than an argument. Knowing that Nature never did betray the heart that loved her, the poet claims it as her privilege, through all the years of our life, to lead from joy to joy — and gives the mechanism in three verbs applied to the mind within us: she can so inform it, so impress it with quietness and beauty, and so feed it with lofty thoughts. What that protects against is then listed, and the list is entirely social rather than natural: evil tongues, rash judgements, the sneers of selfish men, greetings where no kindness is, and all the dreary intercourse of daily life. None of these, the lines say, shall ever prevail against us or disturb our cheerful faith that all which we behold is full of blessings. The lines are given here without commentary, and their place in this series rests on the claim that the natural world does something to the mind which the ordinary traffic of society cannot undo.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.6 MB, 2 pages)