“Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” like many of Wordsworth’s poems of this early part of his life, takes the form of a monologue in the first-person voice of the Poet, written in blank verse -- unrhymed iambic pentameter. Because the rhythm of many of the lines has subtle variations on the fundamental pattern of five iambic feet (da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM), and because there are no strict end-rhymes, the poem must have seemed like prose to its first readers, who were accustomed to the strict metrical and rhyming forms and the elevated poetic diction of 18th century Neo-Classical poets like Alexander Pope and Thomas Gray.
Instead of an obvious rhyme scheme, Wordsworth worked many more subtle echoes into his line endings:
“springs ... cliffs”And in a few places, separated by one or more lines, there are full rhymes and repeated end-words, which create a special emphasis simply because they are so rare in the poem:
“impress ... connect”
“trees ... seem”
“sweet ... heart”
“behold ... world”
“world ... mood ... blood”
“years ... matured”
“thee ... thee”One further note about the poem’s form: In just three places, there is a mid-line break, between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next. The meter is not interrupted -- each of these three lines is five iambs -- but the sentence break is signified not only by a period, but also by an extra vertical space between the two parts of the line, which is visually arresting and marks an important turn of thought in the poem.
“hour ... power”
“decay ... betray”
“lead ... feed”
“gleams ... stream”
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