These hedge- rows, hardly hedge- rows, little lines,
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
Reference:- The given extract has been taken from William Wordsworth’s poem “Tintern Abbey” published in 13 July 1798.
Context:- “Tintern Abbey” also known as Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, the poem describes about William Wordsworth’s second visit in Tintern Abbey in July 13, 1798, after five years of his first visit i.e. in 1793. This poem opens with the description of speaker’s declaration that five years have passed since he last visited this location, where he encountered its tranquil rustic scenery and heard the murmuring sound of the river. His first visit to the bank of the river Wye in 1793 was still fresh in his mind while writing this poem.
Explanation:- These lines describes the second visit of the poet in Tintern Abbey, the lines says that the poet surely wants to emphasise the fact that he’s seen all this before. The “hedge-rows”, or planted rows of shrubbery used to mark property lines or the edge of a field, look like “little lines” from his vintage point. He also describes the hedge-rows as “supportive wood run wild”, which seems odd, given that hedges are planted to keep things in order, so that the fields won’t ‘run wild’.
The narrator then points out all the farmhouse he can see and then the little “wreaths of smoke” appearing here and there from the woods. There are signs of human life here too. But no sounds of human life, the smoke goes up “in silence”. Apparently, the only sound he can hear from his vantage point come from the “mountain springs”. The farms that poet describes here are, “pastoral” which is interesting because the word “pastoral” can refer either to shepherds, the countryside where shepherds are likely to live or to poetry about the shepherds.
Charles Burney once complained that the poem “Tintern Abbey” was tinctured with gloomy, narrow and unsociable ideas of seclusion from the commerce of the world, as if men were born to live in the woods and wilds, unconnected with each other.
The poem begins with an iambic pentameter and is written in blank verse, the length of the lines and the stanzas vary throughout the text that has irregular form of Pindaric.
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