The poem is tha last one of the Lyrical Ballads , and it was written by W., in blank verse, in 1798, during a tour with his sister Dorothy in Southwest England along the Wye River and near Tinter
Abbey, which he had already visited 5 years earlier. Yet W. pays attention not to the abbey, but to the feelings that the landscape around him arouses in him.
The poem can be divided into 4 sections corresponding to the progression of the poet’s mood.
The 1 st
part (ll. 1-22) opens with a hint to the past time, and a description of the natural scene that reminds him his first visit there in 1793. In this section the natural scene is perceived through the senses only and it seems remote, as if it is far and recreated by memory.
The 2 nd
part (ll. 22-57) mirrors the poet’s meditations on how his first visit operated on him and, above all, the meaning that the landscape had for him during his absence of 5 years. The emotions he had felt didn’t fade away in the course of the time, but they have had a restorative function and they have aroused in him sensations of pleasure improving his moral life, so that, through the power of imagination, he can go into the “life of things”.
The poets explains the 3 modes in which the memory of this beautiful forms had affected his life:
Sensations
Feelings
Thoughts
MODES
“sweet”
DEFINITIONS EFFECTS
“tranquil restoration”
“of unremembered pleasure” “influence on that best portion on man’s life”
“blessed mood” “the burden of the mystery is lightened”
In the 3 rd
sequence which includes the ll. 58-111 the poet, after recollecting past sensations, realizes that his approach to nature has been modified by the time:
1) when he was a child , his relationship with nature was instintive, and he enjoyed the pleasure of this contact;
2) later, in his adolescence, his love for nature turned from instintiveness to a passion;
3) now, with the maturity , the joy and the raptures had been lost forever, but they had been compensed by the awareness of an invisible force that unifies all Universe, as a sort of pantheism, so now the poet can have a closer contact with the Mighty Being that is present in all nature. Now W. is certain that Nature will always be a teacher and a guide for him.
What this Mighty Power really is, is not clear, perhaps W tries to introduce a concept of a perception grounded in the senses, but that can be perceived through the recreating work of memory and imagination. The three modes in which the Nature affect tha poet’s life represent the 3 spheres in which W. thinks human personality acts:
Sensation = aestethic
Feeling = ethical
Thought = cognitive
So now, Nature has a cognitive value because it becomes the “anchor of my purest thoughts”.
Moreover, W. attributes to nature an aestethic value because it is a “guide” and a “nurse, so a source of beauty, and, above all, it is “guardian of heart” and “soul of moral being”, thus assuming an ethical/moral value.

Ll.111-159 are explicitelya ddressed to his sister Dorothy. He hopes that she, too, may enjoy the blessings of Nature. However, through Dorothy, W. seems to sddress his exhortations to the reader, inviting him to turn to nature for joy and consolation through the function of memory.
In conclusion, we can say that this poem sums up W.’s philsophy about the relationship between man and Nature. In fact, starting from a contemplation of a rural scene, he reaches the Divine Spirit in it. So the main theme of the poem is the awareness that man and his fellow creatures are bound by a mutual cosmic love.