Wordsworth: some thoughts

While reading Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey I was reminded of the beginning of East Coker. In East Coker he is looking out over a field, meditating on it and the history of it.....And in Tintern Abbey, in the beginning of the poem we read that he is looking out over a landscape as well. Then part way through the poem I noticed this passage:

"And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things." - Wordsworth

It is like resting on an image, landscape, object, or surrounding in your mind so deeply that we go from just seeing everything around us into seeing whatever it is for the first time.....seeing into the life of things, rather than just the things. This passage so reminds me of Wordsworth again: recollected in tranquility. The mind has to be calm, empty, recieving to see into the life of things....or perhaps have a mystical experience......an epiphany. It also seems like Wordsworth is optimally aware of of the world at which he is experiencing, unlike the times of his youthful boyhood, "(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,And their glad animal movements all gone by)" - Wordsworth

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. - Wordsworth

We talked about this passage in class in terms of Dr. Sexson walking to school in the morning while the sun is rising and Bozeman is waking up.

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! - Wordsworth

This passage reminded me of part of the Upanishads that goes something like this ....it is not for the sake of the husband that the wife loves the husband, but for atman, and atman is brahman.

So there are just some thoughts on Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey.