“ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY”, William Wordsworth

1. ROMANTICISM: a brief definition

“Romanticism” is a term used to describe the artistic and intellectual

movement which was produced in Europe during the late 18th and early

19th centuries. This movement was characterized by its individualist

postulates and its independence in front of the classic rules.

In literature, Romanticism appeared at the end of 18th century in

England and Germany, and later in France, Italy and Spain.

The most important Romantic English poets are Lord Byron, Shelley,

Keats, William Blake and William Wordsworth, about whom we are going

to talk in this essay.

In their poems they display many characteristics of Romanticism, such

as:

- An emphasis on the emotions, I mean, an emotional and

intuitive way of understanding the world.

- They explore the relationship between nature and human life.

- A stress on the importance of personal experiences and a

desire to understand what influences the human mind.

- A belief in the power of the imagination.

- An interest in mythological, fantastical, gothic and

supernatural themes.

- Social and political idealism

- Love, which was one of the most important values for the

Romantics.

- They proclaimed that the most important things are freedom,

brotherhood and nature.

BIBLIOGRAPHY (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romaticism)

2. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

William Wordsworth was born in 1770, in Cockermouth (in the Lake

District). With the death of his mother in 1778, his father sent him

to Hawkshead Grammar School. After their father’s death, the

Wordsworth children were left under the guardianship of their uncles.

Although many aspects of his boyhood were positive, he recalled bouts

of loneliness and anxiety. It took him a lot of years, and much

writing, to recover from the death of his parents and his separation

from his siblings.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth)

In 1790 he went to France, where he fell in love with Annette

Vallon, and with whom he had a baby. One year later he had to return

to England alone because of the war between France and Britain. (

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth)

In 1793 he met Samuel Taylor Coloridge. They developed a close

friendship. Together, they produced “Lyrical Ballads” /1798), an

important work in the English Romantic Movement. Moreover, in it we

can find one of Wordsworth’s most famous poems, “Tintern Abbey”.

(http://epdlp.com/escritor.php?id=2446)

Wordsworth had for years been making plans to write long

philosophical poem in three parts, which he intended to call “The

Recluse”. He had in 1798-1799 started an autobiographical poem, which

he never named but called the “poem to Coloridge” which would serve as

an appendix to “The Recluse”.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth)

In 1807, his “Poems in Two Volumes” were published,

including “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early

Childhood”. In 1814 he published “The Excursion” as the second part of

the three-part “The Recluse”. He had not completed the first and the

third parts, and never would complete them. However, he did write a

poetic Prospectus to “The Recluse” in which he lays out the structure

and intent of the poem. (

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth // “Gran

Enciclopedia Larousse”, volume 24, pag 11664-11665)

He died in Rydal Mount in 1850 ad was buried at St.Oswald’s church in

Grasmere. His widow, Mary Hutchinson, published his lengthy

autobiographical “poem to Coleridge” as “The Prelude” several months

after his death. Though this failed to arouse great interest in 1850,

it has since come to be recognised as his masterpiece.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordsworth)

3. ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY

I

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore; -

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

II

The Rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the Rose,

The Moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

III

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,

And while the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:

A timely utterance gave that thought relief,

And I again am strong:

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;

No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;

I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,

The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,

And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,

And with the heart of May

Doth every Beast keep holiday; -

Thou Child of Joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy

Shepherd-boy!

IV

Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call

Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;

My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel - I feel it all.

Oh evil day! if I were sullen

While the Earth herself is adorning,

This sweet May-morning,

And the Children are culling

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,

Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,

And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm: -

I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

- But there's a Tree, of many, one,

A single Field which I have looked upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone:

The Pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

V

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

VI

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,

And, even with something of a Mother's mind,

And no unworthy aim,

The homely Nurse doth all she can

To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,

Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came.

VII

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,

A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!

See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,

Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,

With light upon him from his father's eyes!

See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,

Some fragment from his dream of human life,

Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;

A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral;

And this hath now his heart,

And unto this he frames his song:

Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;

But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride

The little Actor cons another part;

Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"

With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,

That Life brings with her in her equipage;

As if his whole vocation

Were endless imitation.

VIII

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

Thy Soul's immensity;

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep

Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,

Haunted for ever by the eternal mind, -

Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

On whom those truths do rest,

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,

In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;

Thou, over whom thy Immortality

Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,

A Presence which is not to be put by;

To whom the grave

Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight

Of day or the warm light,

A place of thought where we in waiting lie;

Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight,

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

IX

O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,

That nature yet remembers

What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benediction: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest;

Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: -

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a Creature

Moving about in worlds not realised,

High instincts before which our mortal Nature

Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:

But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,

Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,

To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,

Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence in a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the Children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

X

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!

And let the young Lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,

Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts today

Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

XI

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet;

The Clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: (http://bartleby.con/101/536.html)

4. ANALYSIS OF THE POEM:

“Intimations of Immortality”

In 1807 William Wordsworth published “Poem in Two Volumes”, in

which we can find that poem, whose full-name is “Ode: Intimations of

Immortality from Recollections of Every Childhood”.

(http:members.aol.com/wordspage/home.htm)

Many of Wordsworth’s poems, including this, deal with the

subjects of childhood and the memory of childhood in the mind of the

adult in particular, childhood’s lost connection with nature, which

can be preserved only in memory.

(http://users.dickinson.edu/~nicholsa/Romnat/wordsworth.htm)

In this poem Wordsworth uses a lot of imagination to get his

point through to the reader. He wants us to be able to see what he

sees and to feel what he feels.

(http://users.dickinson.edu/~nicholsa/Romnat/wordsworth.htm)

The structure of this poem is unique in Wordsworth’s work, I

mean, unlike his characteristically fluid, natural spoken monologues,

it is written in a songlike cadence with frequent changes in rhyme

scheme and rhythm. It is written in eleven variable ode stanzas with

variable rhyme schemes, in iambic lines with anything from two to five

stressed syllables. (http:members.aol.com/wordspage/home.htm)

The rhymes occasionally alternate lines:

I

“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

the earth, and every common sight,

to me did seem

apparelled in celestial light,”

occasionally fall in couplets:

II

“Turn wheresoe’er I may,

by night or day,”

and occasionally occur within a single line:

“But yet I know, where’er I go”.

If we analyse the title, we have to say that its full name

is “Intimations of Immortality from recollections of early

childhood”, although it is better known as “Intimations of

Immortality”.

In this poem Wordsworth explains how humans change over time. In fact,

when we are a child we are connected with nature, but as we get old we

tend to forget nature and become more interested in other

responsibilities of adulthood, and that connection with nature stays

as recollections of childhood in our memory. So, in my opinion I think

that the title of this poem is good and right, because reading it we

can guess more or less about what we are going to be told in the poem;

at least we can guess that the poem deals with recollections of

something about the childhood.

As we have said before, the poem is divided in eleven stanzas,

which we are going to explain one by one.

In the first stanza, the author says wistfully and sad

that “there was a time” (childhood) when all of nature seemed

dreamlike to him (“Apparelled in celestial light”). So, here what is

described is the poet’s lamentation on not being able to see any more

the glory and the freshness of a dream that his childhood had (“The

things which I have seen I now can see no more”).

In the second stanza, he says that he still sees the good and

beautiful things of nature: the rainbow coming, the rose, the moon,

the sunshine... Nevertheless the author feels that a glory has passed

away from the earth.

In the third stanza, while listening to the bird’s sing in

springtime and watching the young lambs leap and play, he suddenly

becomes sad and fearful (“To me alone there came a thought of grief”);

but this sadness doesn’t last too long, because the sound of nearby

waterfalls, the echoes of the mountains… restored him to strength. He

ends saying that all the earth is gay, because of that he exhorts a

shepherd boy to play around him.

In the fourth stanza, he declares that is impossible to feel

sad in such a beautiful May morning, with children playing around him

and among the flowers. Although, suddenly, he looks at a tree and a

field which said to each other that something is gone (“both of them

speak of something that is gone”). The same is made by a pansy.

Because of that he asked himself what has happened to appearance of

nature (“whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the

glory and the dream?”).

In the fifth stanza, Wordsworth says that human beings are

asleep and should forget important things (“Our birth is but a sleep

and a forgetting”). Moreover it is said that human beings live in a

purer, more glorious realm before they enter the earth. He says that

as children, we still retain some memory of that place, which causes

our experience of the earth to be suffused with its magic; but as the

baby passes through boyhood and adulthood and into manhood, he sees

that magic die.

In the sixth stanza, the author declares that because of

earthly materials human beings tend to forget what is need in life

(“Forget the glories he hath known, and that imperial palace whence he

came”).

In the seventh stanza, the author is looking at a six years

old boy, and imagines his life and the love that his parents feel for

him. Wordsworth describes the way in which a young boy leaves nature,

because he has to deal with adulthood and a whole different kind of

life. That is reflected when he sees the boy playing with some

imitated fragment of adult life (“little plan or chart”, “a weeding or

a festival”, “a mourning or a funeral”). At the end, the author says

that all life is an imitation.

In the eight stanza, the poet addresses the boy as if he was a

prophet of the lost truth (“mighty prophet! Seer blest! On whom those

truths do res”). And, rhetorically asks him why he hurries toward an

adult life of custom and earthly freight, if he has access to the

glories of his origins and to the pure experience of nature.

In the ninth stanza, the author goes back into memories of his

childhood , which grant him a kind of access to that lost world of

innocence and instinct, to that world with nature.

In the tenth stanza, after that thoughts he has become very

happy, because of that he urges the birds to sing, and urges all

creatures to participate in what he says “the gladness of the May”.

Then, again, he is stricken by the thought that he I old now, but that

sad doesn’t last too long because with the thought that he has been

with nature all the years makes him happy again, because he has a lot

of recollections of his childhood with the nature so, he can feel the

joy like he felt before.

In the final stanza, Wordsworth claims that he will forever be in love

with nature and all its beauty; and he will in love with it until the

he dies.

So, what we can said after reading that poem is that Wordsworth

believed that, upon being born, human beings move from a perfect,

idealized realm into the imperfect, un-ideal earth. As children, some

memory of the former purity and glory in which they lived remains,

best perceived in the solemn and joyous relationship of the child to

the beauties of nature. But as children grow older, the memory fades,

and the magic of nature dies. Still, the memory of childhood can offer

an important solace, which brings with it almost a kind of re-access

to the lost purities of the past. And the maturing mind develops the

capability to understand nature in human terms, and to see in it

metaphors for human life, which compensate for the loss of the direct

connection.

Finally, if we talk about the characteristics of Wordsworth,

we can see that there are some of them in that poem. Firstly, nature,

in all its forms, was important to Wordsworth, who concentrates on the

ways in which he responds and relates to the world. He uses his poetry

to look at the relationship between nature and human life, and to

explore the belief that nature can have an impact on our emotional and

spiritual lives. (www.wordsworth.org.uk). That feature is found in the

poem, because in it is related the nature with the human being.

Moreover, all the poem goes round nature.

Secondly, Wordsworth saw imagination as a powerful, active force that

works alongside our sense, interpreting the way we view the world and

influencing how we react to events. He believed that a strong

imaginative life is essential for our well-being.

(www.wordsworth.org.uk). We can see imagination in the poem when the

tree are talking between each other, or when the pansy is also taking.

5. CONCLUSION

Wordsworth’s poems initiated the Romantic era by emphasizing

feeling, instinct, and pleasure above formality and mannerism. He gave

expression to inchoate human emotion. (www.wordsworth.org.uk)

“Intimations of Immortality” is one of his most important

works, together with “The Prelude” and “Lyrical Ballads”. The Ode

deals with childhood’s lost connection with nature as human beings get

old. That connection only can be preserved in memory.

(http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1772278)

Talking about Wordsworth’s influences, we have to say that he

not only influenced the people who worked with him, but also to some

authors that presented their plays after Romanticism, such as

Spencer, Calvert, Coleridge…

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/william_wordsworth)

To end this essay about the poem “Intimations of Immortality”,

I want to give my opinion. I didn’t know that poem, and when I found

it on the internet I thought that my essay had to be about it. I liked

this poem, because I think that all that is said in it is true, at

least for me. When we are children, we are innocent, we like to play,

we haven’t got problems; but when we are adult, we have to deal with

problems in the job, in the family… because of that we forget the good

and beautiful things of our childhood.

What more can I say? I just want to say that I recommend that poem to

everybody, because it’s really interesting, beautiful and because it

is a masterpiece of the Romantic English Literature.