Each student seems to understand the poet's longing for a
simpler time when Nature was in contact with his spirit through his
beliefs. A simple look into the student's own love of the Peaks of Otter
or the beautiful shore at Smith Mountain Lake or a walk on the beach at Long
Island or North Myrtle Beach will help the poet's love become something
relevant, especially when the pressures of the end of senior year are heaviest
on the students' minds.
Contrast the lovely beauty of this scene of the village where Wordsworth lived with the skyline above -- which is more likely to bring gentle rest and a chance to think, dream, and enjoy a simple life?
Lake Windemere reflects the "uncertain heavens" in its waters
with the serenity that Wordsworth loved. Students, too, can remember
places of such serenity where they have fished, boated, and swum. Touching
their memories with the tranquility his lines recreates is well-spent
effort.
Can teachers talk about faith and beliefs in the classroom
today? Perhaps not directly, but the sources of faith are certainly found
in such philosophical poems as "Ode: Intimations of Immortality."
What student cannot remember the wonder with which he/she climbed a "tree,
of many, one" in a grandfather's back yard or the thrill of seeing a beautiful
rainbow after a terrifying rainstorm?
What young person in Central Virginia has not played games mocking the activities of their parents, or testing out roles as athletic heroes or beautiful models, trying "earnestly" to belie their innocence as they hurry to become adults, wanting to escape childhood?
What senior in high school does not know that blossoming
passions of "splendour in the grass" and "glory in the flower"? What
student has not begun to feel the "shades of the prison house" begin to close
upon him/her as the struggle to work part time and go to school have created
terrible pressures, blocking freedom for extra-curricular senior activities and
causing an uneasy balance between work and school?
What senior has not begun to look backward with nostalgia on the years of irresponsibility and relaxation that they leave behind when they graduate? How can young people prepare for the future without some regret at leaving behind the stage of life from which they depart?
Wordsworth's words in this great ode promise them that their
unblemished view of the beckoning world will change, that that Earth will make
them experience disappointments and disillusionments as they grasp
for the "treasures" she spreads before them. Their youthful optimism may
make them doubt predictions that Life will lose its luster, but they
already long to know that there is something more beyond the struggles of
adulthood waiting for them at last. They can love the natural world for
its "meanest flower that blows" even when they are moving rapidly into the
traffic of the world.
What does "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" have for today's student? Students know what the life of stress in a big city can be like; they can understand the poet's longing to go into the country to escape that stress. They understand what it was like to roam the countryside like a deer rushing through the woods. They have been to Crabtree Falls and Holcombe Rock's Blue Hole. They have hunted the hills of Central Virginia, camped in the Blue Ridge Mountains, waded in icy streams in the Shenandoah Valley. They have hiked through the woods of Campbell County and canoed on the James River.
They can easily understand the Nature has never betrayed their hearts as people have, that Nature has been their guardian, their guide, their comforter, when they consider why they love to sit in a deer stand for hours or why they love to drive through the winding back roads to their homes more than they like to drive Wards Road or Timberlake Road. They can identify with the shared pleasures of seeing and experiencing the beauties of nature with sisters, brothers, loved ones. What student in this area of Virginia has not gone to the Peaks with youth groups, friends, family, for Sunday afternoon picnics? What student has not loved the mountains that are so nearby? Let pictures take the students back to these places. Let them recall the solace they find in such places.