Tintern Abbey: Cistercians and Wordsworth's Great Poem

 

Upon arriving at Tintern Abbey, after a half-hour bus ride from Chepstow, I found myself in a frenzy of taking pictures:

I'd planned to visit Tintern Abbey for a number of years but it'd never happened. However, I was finally here and the camera kept clicking away, from every angle possible:

Have just read that the Abbey at Tintern was founded in 1131 by Walter de Clare, the Lord of Chepstow, and is situated on the Welsh bank of the river Wye, with the latter forming the border between Monmouthshire, Wales and Gloucestershire, England.

Tintern Abbey was also the first Cistercian monastic foundation set up in Wales and the second in Britain after Waverley Abbey (near the market town of Farnham, Surrey).

Of course, while viewing Tintern Abbey, I couldn't help but think of the wanton vandalism of Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, with a huge part of the Protestant Reformation having been a big land grab.

In my mind's eye at Tintern, I could see and hear Gregorian Chant being sung by white-robed Cistercians, especially the Dies Irae chant from an Old Latin Funeral Mass, in pre-Reformation times.

Even the ruins of Tintern Abbey were amazing, so I couldn't help but think and imagine how big and beautiful the place would've been while fully operational in pre-Reformation times.

Of course, were were also at Tintern Abbey to follow in Wordsworth's footsteps after having trod his (and Coleridge's) path in rural Somerset.

While looking at the River Wye and the surrounding countryside, I was immediately taken back to Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey poem, or Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey (On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798) to be precise:

                                         "Five years have past; five summers, with the length

                                         Of five long winters! and again I hear

                                         These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

                                         With a soft inland murmur ..."

                                                                                "... These beauteous forms,

                                                 Through a long absence, have not been to me

                                                 As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:

                                                 But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din

                                                 Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

                                                 In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

                                                 Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

                                                 And passing even into my purer mind

                                                 With tranquil restoration ..."

 

    Of course, Wordsworth describes and reflects on the grandeur of the surrounding Nature at Tintern Abbey, much better than I could ever dream of.

 

   While looking at the River Wye at Tintern, it also immediately reminded me of the Rhine river  

       valley, from when a friend and I had visited the Loreley Night of the Prog Festival in 2017.

But again, nobody describes a state of mind (soul) at Tintern better than Wordsworth:

            "And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,

With many recognitions dim and faint,

And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

The picture of the mind revives again:

While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts

That in this moment there is life and food

For future years ..."

 

    Really happy that this piece about Tintern Abbey has given me the opportunity to recall the profound content of Wordsworth's great poem:

                                     "... For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.".

 

    When reading the lines above and below, it's unsurprising to often hear that Tintern Abbey is a poem with a central pantheistic message:

                                         "... Nor, perchance—

If I should be where I no more can hear

Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams

Of past existence—wilt thou then forget

That on the banks of this delightful stream

We stood together; and that I, so long

A worshipper of Nature, hither came

Unwearied in that service: rather say

With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal

Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,

That after many wanderings, many years

Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,

And this green pastoral landscape, were to me

More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!"

 

    Yeah, I'm really grateful for my visit to Tintern Abbey both giving me a kind of inner, pre-Reformation vision of the Abbey, and taking me back to Wordsworth's profound love of Nature in his classic poem.

    And, of course, I vowed to keep hold of the memory of my own magical trip to Tintern Abbey.

    In the next blog, I'll tell the story of how we ended up doing wild camping on one of the hills/slopes surrounding Tintern Abbey.