Tintern Abbey, founded in 1131 by Walter de Clare, and dissolved in 1536, became, in the centuries which followed, a popular tourist destination. In June 1793, Wordsworth when on a trip to the South West. Having walked the five miles or so from Chepstow, Wordsworth arrived at Tintern, an experience which he recalls in 'Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisting the Banks on the Wye During a Tour, July 13 1798'. In the poem, the narrator insists that the poet gains the healing influence of nature. The natural surroundings, therefore, are implicit offering place of sanctuary or escape from the trappings of socio-political troubles. It has been suggested that the imagery of unity, the picturesqueness of the scene, finds origin in William Gilpin's Observation on the River Wye (1782). Yet Wordsworth's poem looks beyond the surface unity of the picturesque mode in its suggestions of fusion between the mind and and nature. In the prevailing or unchanged landscape, the poem seems to celebrate the enabled transcendence of time.
In Tennyson's poem, 'Tears, Idle Tears' (1847), also inspired by the Abbey ruins, the poet links topographical images with the theme of memory and the past: in the first lines, temporal distance is associated with spatial distance.
