Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey and "Spots of Time" from The Prelude

Wordsworth's musings in Tintern Abbey's which establish his notion of nature as a healing force arise once more in direct connection with the section "Spots of Time" in his Prelude. He writes of memories of nature and how they can be restorative both in the moment and later in times of despair. As he ventures about the "steep and lofty cliffs" in Tintern, he connects this imagery with the cliffs he sat upon as he waited for the carriage to take him home in Prelude. Though both poems reflect back on his childhood, attempting to immerse the reader and poet within that time, they cannot abstain from harboring a tone of condescension as Wordsworth speaks of his younger self. His "hour of thoughtless youth," (Tintern Abbey: 90-91) and "trite reflections of morality," (The Prelude: 373) while amidst his awe-inspiring and formative moments nature seem to him as a man both naive but also gravely important to him. They remind him of a perspective of life that an adult can often lose sight of in the face of maturity and all its troubles. By this we see an inner struggle with Wordsworth in which he attempts to reconcile the anxieties of his adult self with the earnest and naive--though powerful--meditations as a youth.