"Tintern Abbey" and "Frost at Midnight"

 In both "Tintern Abbey" and "Frost at Midnight", there is an interesting moment in which the speaker looks to someone younger than himself and considers the younger person's future.  The speaker in both poems feel that they have progressed past a moment that they cannot return to.  Yet, they look with anticipation for the younger to have the experience that they can no longer have.  In "Tintern Abbey", Wordsworth suggests that his younger sister will soon have similar experiences to those he has had in the past. He seems to look forward to that for her but at the same time there is a tone of nostalgia in his remarks.  In "Frost at Midnight", the speakers wishes for the younger character is much more explicit.  The speaker talks vividly about his baby and his hopes for his/her life.  However, in this poem, the poet has not experienced the sublime, natural transcendence that he dreams his baby will someday experience.  Rather, the father seems to hope that the baby will have a more intimate experience with nature and relish moments that he never shared. He writes: 

For I was reared

In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze

By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

Of that eternal language, which thy God

Utters, who from eternity doth teach

Himself in all, and all things in himself.

While the relationship between the speaker and the younger character is different in these two poems, there is a definite connection to be made.  In both poems, the speaker recognizes a moment that he can never experience (or never had the chance to experience) and wishes that the younger person will have that experience.  These poems highlight the importance of time as well as nature for the Romantics.