Middle School
Worksheets
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was one of the first of the English Romantic poets. The publication of Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems published by Wordsworth and his friend Samuel Coleridge, is often considered the first event in the Romantic Movement in English literature.
William grew up in the Lake District in scenic northwest England. As a child, he spent endless hours, along with his sister Dorothy, playing in the beautiful outdoors. After spending years of his adult life traveling and learning about the world, he chose to return to the Lake District to live. There he lived in a house with whitewashed walls and flagstone floors known as Dove Cottage. It was there that he wrote some of his best poetry.
In "Tintern Abbey," Wordsworth describes, not the beautiful old abbey itself, but rather the landscape surrounding it. He gives us a picture of the landscape as he remembered it from a visit there during his boyhood. Using descriptive language, he allows us to see the woods, the hills, and the cliffs as he saw them. He talks about the spirit of the land. Then he goes on to tell us just what the countryside meant to him. According to Wordsworth, the countryside around Tintern Abbey was an example of the perfect place to learn "the joy of elevated thoughts."
