Inside the Abbey

I stand on a green carpet, the grass soft beneath my feet. Above the stones loom in pointed arches. The Abbey roofs have long fallen in and the outside air is cool on my cheek. Underneath a bare sky, looking at the trees through glassless windows, it is easy to forget the tourists filling the adjacent car park, coach parties from Peterborough who will later fill the local tea shops with umbrellas and ceaseless chatter. Lives of quiet reflection and daily prayer were lived out between these walls for over 400 years; the Abbey has been abandoned for nearly the same time again. But could it still bear an imprint of such devotion? Do the stones still offer the ‘deep seclusion’ that Wordsworth sensed when he composed his lines above Tintern Abbey? I look up at the yawning sky and wonder.