When you're planning to walk 95 miles in 9 days, adding extra mileage for a side-trip is not to be taken lightly. But this hike through Wales brought us in sight and reasonable walking distance of Tintern Abbey, the inspiration of one of William Wordsworth's best-known poems, "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey."
Wordsworth (what a wonderful name for a poet!) was also a walker and was known for travelling that way throughout England and Wales. No surprise I would feel an affinity for him so when our planned hike took us along trails he no doubt had also walked, it was impossible not to spend some time there as well.
From a break in the trees, we could see the ruins of the Abbey. I imagine it was much the same view that Wordsworth viewed those 200 years before us.
"Once again I see these hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive woods run wild; these pastoral farms
Green to the very door..."
There is something about walking in new places, seeing ancient things that are new to your eyes that brings life into a different focus. I realize that Wordsworth wasn't actually talking about the Abbey itself, but about the experience of being out in nature and being able to see more clearly those things that are important.
I took a copy of the poem with me, to read as I looked at the ruins of the Abbey, but was struck not so much by that poem, but by the first lines of a second poem that just happened to be on the copied page after the final stanza of Tintern Abbey.
That poem? "The World is Too Much With Us." The lines?
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
