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Contemplating the beauty of a natural landscape, the serene speaker of William Wordsworth's poem "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" (1798) seems wholly insulated from society. As scholars have argued, however, Wordsworth's retreat to nature was an aesthetic response to—and implicit critique of—England's rapid industrialization and urbanization at that time. ______ despite its idyllic quality, the poem bears the imprint of the dramatic changes affecting English life.