The Poetry of R.E. Slater: Tintern Abbey

"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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Monday, January 20, 2025

Tintern Abbey - Poems & Illustrations

Tintern Abbey

Tears, Idle Tears

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892)

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;

O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

- ALT

"Tears, Idle Tears" is a lyric poem by the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It was originally embedded in his 1847 narrative poem The Princess, where it is sung by a court maiden. The poem is an emotionally intense meditation on the passing of time and the loss of friends and loved ones. This subject matter might be partly explained by the fact that Tennyson wrote the poem after a visit to the destitute Tintern Abbey, near the grave of a dear friend. - Lit Charts, for further poem analysis

Quotes by authors on their experience when visiting Tintern Abbey

Poetical Tintern

“Descriptions of Tintern Abbey should be written on ivy leaves, and with a poet’s pen, for no other do justice to the air of solemn grandeur and religious melancholy reigning within its delicate cloisters”
— Catherine Sinclair, Hill and Valley, 1838

Tintern Abbey was as much a magnet for poets as for professional and amateur visual artists in the period. The most famous literary work associated with the site is William Wordsworth’s Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July,13, 1798. But it is interesting to note that there was large body of verse on the subject of the Abbey and topographical poems on the region well before the end of the eighteenth century. Syned Davies’ 1745 “A Voyage to Tintern Abbey, in Monmouthshire, from Whitminster in Gloucestershire” is the earliest represented here. The selection of authors and verses gathered here represents a small fraction of the surviving poetical descriptions, effusions and reflections inspired by the ruins. Those anthologized by Charles Heath in his Historical and Descriptive Account of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey, a guide sold locally at the Beaufort Arms, were carried into the Abbey itself, and perhaps read there.

Works on Display:

Many poets have written poems about Tintern Abbey, including:

Rev. Dr. Sneyd Davies: Wrote "Epistle IV" in 1745, which describes his voyage to Tintern Abbey from Whitminster
Rev. Duncomb Davis: Wrote a "Poetical description of Tintern Abbey" around 1790
Edmund Gardner: Wrote a "Sonnet written in Tintern Abbey" in the 1790s
Edward Jerningham: Wrote "Tintern Abbey" around 1800
Rev. Luke Booker: Wrote an "Original sonnet composed on leaving Tintern Abbey"
John Cunningham: Wrote "Elegy on a Pile of Ruins", which was published in 1761
William Mason: Wrote an excerpt from "The English Garden: A Poem"
Alfred Lord Tennyson: Wrote "Tears, Idle Tears"
Allen Ginsberg: Wrote "Wales Visitation"
Matthew Arnold: Wrote "The Buried Life"

William Wordsworth's Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey was published in 1798 as part of his collection Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth's poem was inspired by his second visit to Tintern Abbey, and his reflections on the transience of time and the natural sublime.

ILLUSTRATIONS OVER THE YEARS OF TINTERN ABBEY