Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

After five long years, Wordsworth returns to the Tintern Abbey. He revisits not just the abbey itself, but the nature surrounding it. He starts off by describing the landscape in detail and in extraordinary fashion. Making it seem like nature was all that there was surrounding him, engulfing him. He describes the nature as, "The anchor of my purest thought, the nurse,/The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/Of all my moral being." We see here that he regards nature as the divine aspect of life. He does not go so far to reject that God is all divine but believes nature and God are one (a pantheistic view). Read out of context, one would think that this quote relates to Christianity, and rightly so, because of the similarities in beliefs. Wordsworth illustrates that it is not the beliefs that are different, but it is the form in which they are presented to us. In Christianity, God is found within us through prayer and devotion. In Wordsworth's pantheistic view any divinity is seen through nature. He describes himself as a "worshipper of Nature". Here, I don't believe Wordworth means that he worships nature directly, but he believes that nature is the portal in which divinity comes to us. I found a very interesting YouTube video that I think describes pantheism well. I can't say it changed my thinking after I watched it, but it did help me understand the belief better.

Nature is my God