Welcome one and all to the fiftieth instalment of the Areopagus. This week I returned to a place I had not been for far too long, and while wandering along those familiar streets I thought of Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth, written and published in 1798. It's one of the poems which heralded the start of Romanticism and, by extension, all modern poetry.
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.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses.
The poem goes on, and an ent…
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