Eleanor's Polished Essay #20 (Last One!)

Eleanor Hilton
9 English
Mr. Salsich
May 26th 2009

The Visit;
An Essay on Growing Older and Looking Back

Sometime or another we all go back to visit something from our past. Whether a memory or you actually travel to the real place, going back is something we can all understand. Three things that also relate to this is "Tintern Abbey", re-visiting Pine Point, and "The Writer".

Over two-hundred years ago William Wordsworth at age 28 wrote his famous five-page long poem "Tintern Abbey". Five summers' have now past since the last time Wordsworth visited this church. He gazes upon the stones that he had played and explored with in his childhood. He realizes that a lot has changed in those five seemingly short years. Before, "[The] colours and [the] forms where then to [him] an appetite". Now, "All its aching joys are now no more"; he is more mature, more responsible. This will or has happened to all of us; what we once enjoyed now seems childish and almost inappropriate. These sort of reflections on your life can give great wisdom on who you are as a person, I am sure that Wordsworth learnt a lot that day.

Not so long ago, Richard Wilber wrote the poem "The Writer". He is narrating his daughter writing a story. She is typing with such a 'bunched clamor' that it makes the narrater 'pause in the stairwell' and contemplate (FAST) his daughter, and the story. He thinks back to the time a starling was trapped in the very same room that the 'commotion of type-writer keys' is now coming from. It took a whole hour until it managed to soar out of the window, happy, excited, free, alive. (Tetracolon Climax) The way the narrator thinks back on the old days is like Wordsworth in his poem. Wilber, unlike Wordsworth however, wasn't in the room but thinking about the room and its uses. This poem is looking back, but in a more figurative way which everybody does from time to time.

These last few weeks of Pine Point life has had a big impact on me. Next year I will no longer walk down that walkway, take my book out of those lockers, or play on the sports teams I have been on for four years. If I was to come back and visit Pine Point in five years time, I would want to say that I would be relieved. I would be back at the school that gave me security and helped me grow. However my thoughts will probably change in five years. It may make me sad to visit Pine Point; after all I will have left my other twenty-one, and it may not be the same. It may also make me happy. I would visit my old teachers and lay on the fields that I laid on those years ago, and perhaps even look for my old locker, just to see if it was still being used.(polysyndeton) No matter what I feel, I know that if I went back to see Pine Point, I would check for any new buildings. Pine Point is always growing and changing, and I wouldn't be surprised if there had been renovations or new constructions.

Whenever I visit Pine Point again I know things will be different, just like things were different for Wordsworth when he re-visited Tintern Abbey in Wales and in the future when 'The Writer' grows up. We grow older and looking back, the you from five years ago may seem like a completely different person.

Extra-Credit Self-Assesment:
1.) I am always trying to work on cutting out the silly quick-fix mistakes. Sometimes it can be difficult for me; maybe I don't have much time or I just missed it.

2.) I especially like my extra-credit paragraph on "The Writer". I spent time on it and used quite a few quotes to enhance and smooth my words.

3.) Some of the sentences in the first body paragraph about "Tintern Abbey" may have some unnecessary words in them, but I tried to sort that out.