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The image of her curse ‘[blasting] the new born Infant’s tear’ could be seen as a foreboding and hopeless one: that the anguish that the speaker sees and hears is being carried on to the next generation, thus creating a cycle of despair.

However, in ‘Tintern Abbey’, Wordsworth illustrates a trope of Romanticism by linking nature with transcendence. The poem takes on a philosophical tone when Wordsworth writes that the image of Tintern Abbey makes ‘human blood almost suspended’ to and we ‘become a living soul’. This could suggest that Wordsworth sees such impressions of scenes as having a transcendental quality, one whereby the human soul and nature connect allowing us to ‘see into the life of things’. Tintern Abbey itself is seen as a holy ruin, and therefore can its religious connotations can be seen as apt for an image of transcendence. Furthermore, Wordsworth appears to attribute this scene a healing quality. In the second stanza, Wordsworth writes that the scene gives him ‘tranquil restoration’, and later calls it ‘the nurse’ and ‘the guardian’ of ‘[his] heart’. These maternal metaphors attributed to nature suggests not only that Man can turn to nature to heal, but (in a similar vein to Blake), by inversion, that we are sick when not in the company of nature. This is seen in the second stanza wherein Wordsworth admits that he turns to an image of Tintern Abbey ‘’mid the din/Of towns and cities’ – ‘How often has my spirit turned to thee!’. We can therefore argue that Wordsworth and Blake convey a similar notion in that they both term ‘towns and cities’ as serving as both a literal detachment from nature, but also a metaphysical one.

So it shows that whilst the two poets both have a clear distinction with the place of their poetry, their similarity is does not lie in solitude as them both being first generation poets. Rather, both poems resonate the notion that that the growing influence of industry, and the changing politics of greed that came with it, is having a ruinous effect on mankind and thus detaching us from not only our inner self, but those of the community. Not only that, but the two poems seek to illustrate nuanced views of youth, with Blake subscribing to the archetypal Romantic idea that youth is something precious and should be preserved in its innocence, whereas Wordsworth inclines towards an older, more pensive figure – one that has the ability to truly appreciate the beauty of nature rather than simply consuming it for pleasure.