WORDSWORTH’S Ode: Intimations on Immortality from Recollections of

 

CRITICAL APPRECIATION:

William Wordsworth has said that, “nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being” (552, Wordsworth). In Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” the idea of immortality is not discussed in mortal terms, but in spiritual.  What the child perceives intuitively, the infiniteness of the soul, the adult may only perceive through mature contemplation and thought. “Intimations of Immortality” is a philosophic exploration of the soul’s place in nature and in the universe.

In the beginning of the poem, immorality is linked with a closeness to God, of which the child possesses. The poem begins with Wordsworth lamenting the loss of divine light, of his thoughtless exuberance when experiencing nature in youth. In the first stanza he writes, that: “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” (553, Wordsworth).  When he was young, “every common sight” seemed to him to be ethereal, and now “in night or day” he feels “That there hath past away a glory from the earth” (553, Wordsworth). The child once felt close to God through nature, but he has lost that “visionary gleam”, his relationship with nature, and his relationship with God as a result of maturation.

Wordsworth believes that when we are born into this world we bring with us a shred of our spiritual reality, a glimmer of a hope for immortality, of light, but this is lost as we descend further away from God into adulthood. He writes, “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;/The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star/ [with] trailing clouds of glory do we come/ From God, who is our home” (554, Wordsworth). He then compares maturation and the realization of mortality to a prison: “Heaven lies about us in our infancy!/ Shades of the prison-house begin to close/ Upon the growing boy” (555, Wordsworth). The “shades of the prison-house” are indicative of darkness, of death, but as long as the boy “beholds the light, and wence it flows,/ He sees it in his joy!” (555, Wordsworth). It is not the ignorance to our mortality that allows for that youthful, thoughtless joy, it is the immortality perceived by the youth. As the boy travels “farther from the east”, towards the west with the setting sun, and matures he is forced to confront his own mortality and the dream of immortality “fade[s] into the light of common day” (555, Wordsworth).

In the ninth stanza Wordsworth exclaims his appreciation for his youthful admiration of nature, and there is a shift from lamenting the loss of the youthful joy brought forth by nature, to being empowered by it. He says, “O Joy! that in our embers/ Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers, what was so fugitive! “(556, Wordsworth). He considers “the simple creed/ Of Childhood” and writes: “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;/ 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,/And yet a master light of all our seeing” (556-7, Wordsworth). Wordsworth celebrates his youthful years and declares “those shadowy recollections” of his to be a necessary memory, which he will hold dear. But the “thoughtless youth” only comprises a portion of the soul that Wordsworth believes to be so infinite. Immortality means something different to the child than the adult. Immortality, the infiniteness of the soul, is an idea that the child beholds inherently. “The experiences of Wordsworth’s childhood serve not as intimations of immortality, or as intimations of infinity, but as psychological illusions which the poet outgrows” (863, Rayson). For the “visionary gleam” that once was supplied by nature to poet, no longer is.

In the tenth stanza Wordsworth celebrates the “philosophic mind” that can only be born from maturation. He states, “What though the radiance which was once so bring/ Be now for ever taken from my sight,/…We will grieve not, rather find/ Strength in what remains behind;/…In the faith that looks through death,/ In years that bring the philosophic mind” (557, Wordsworth). The immorality Wordsworth discusses is not “the theological term which signifies endlessness of life, but the infiniteness of the human consciousness” (862, Rayson). Both the child and the adult arrive at the realization of the soul’s immortality, although for the child it is realized intuitively, and for the adult it is realized through introspection and mature thought.

In the end, Wordsworth is grateful for the loss of his child-like zeal in nature, for he believes he has been given “abundant recompense” for the loss of it—he has gained a “philosophic mind”. He writes that although “The innocent brightness of a new-born Day,/ Is lovely yet”, he must give “Thanks to the human heart by which we live”, because it is it’s very mortality that gives way to the immortality of the soul (557-8, Wordsworth).

AT A ANOTHER GLANCE:

Overview

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is one of the most famous poets to come out of the Romantic tradition in England. More so than an English poet, Wordsworth was a poet of the Lake District and a ‘Poet of Nature.’ Wordsworth’s most famous works include Lyrical Ballads (along with Samuel Coleridge) and The Prelude. He is well known for his radical changes to poetic language and form. Wordsworth is also famous for his personal politics and his transition away from the more radical ideas of his youth.

Wordsworth’s "Ode: Intimations on Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood," was published in 1807 in his work Poems, in Two Volumes, and was titled only "Ode."  Wordsworth spent a lot of time trying to answer the question that he left off with at the end of stanza four. He finally finished the work two years later and added a total of eight more stanzas before it was published. This poem is representative of the melancholic tone and sense of loss by which his poetry is known. This poem is a well-studied and well-known text and is often referred to as only the "Immortality Ode" by scholars.

The Immortality Ode tells the story of growing-up and the loss of innocence that is connected with the passing of time. Wordsworth is concerned with not only what is lost, but also what is gained by this experience.

Major Themes/Scenes:

Memory and Sense of Loss:

Wordsworth is concerned with the theme of memory and the passing of time in the “Immortality Ode.” In the first stanza the speaker is reminiscing on the times of old when everything seemed to be “appareled in celestial light,/ The glory and the freshness of a dream.” (1:4-5). There is an innocence and beauty in the language, but as the first stanza draws to a close Wordsworth begins to transform this happiness and innocence into a melancholic recollection. Wordsworth counters this supernatural innocence and way of seeing the world with the speaker’s inability to regain those illusions later in life “The things which I have seen I now can see no more. (1.9).  There is happiness in the child’s way of seeing and the “glory,” but the speaker is thinking about the fact that everything did not remain as it was in this memory. The childhood illusions cannot be regained. At one point the speaker says that “there hath past away a glory from the earth.” (2.9). The speaker has changed, and something has been lost in the process of growing up. Wordsworth also characterizes this experience as entrapping or limiting. As the boy grows up the “shades of the prison-house begin to close/Upon the growing Boy” and eventually his "soul shall have her earthly freight." (5.11-12; 8.19). The boy is young enough to avoid this prison for a while longer, but the impending loss is inevitable.

Wordsworth seems unsure of what exactly has been lost. He ends the fourth stanza with a set of questions: “Whither is fled the visionary gleam?/ Where is it now, the glory and the dream?” (4.21-22). This “visionary gleam” that he remembers in his childhood is gone, but where does this “glory” go? He is very concerned with not only the origins of this innocence, but also in the disappearance of the “visionary gleam.” Throughout the poem he presents the process as a gradual loss that is hard identify as it is happening, but in recollection it can be discussed to some extent through the memory. Children are made to “Forget the glories he hath known,/ And that imperial palace whence he came,” so that those that are most qualified to understand the origins of this glory are made to forget throughout their life (6.7-8). As Wordsworth works through this origin and loss of innocence he also describes children as superior spiritual, and even philosophical beings.

Children as Religious and Spiritual Beings.

Wordsworth characterizes children using spiritual and religious language to talk about them. They view the world as if it was “appareled in celestial light,” and see the sunshine as “a glorious birth” (1.4; 2.7). Words such as “glory” and “celestial” infer that children are somehow closer to the spiritual aspects of life than adults are and have a privileged view of the world. They are able to see the world in a different way because of their connection to a more pure form of nature and being because of their age. Wordsworth is raising many philosophical questions about the acquisition of knowledge. In this poem, the younger children see the world and nature as if they are bathed in an innocent religious glow.  There is a power given to the young.

Wordsworth not only describes the way that children view the world as “celestial” and with spiritual imagery; he also uses similar language when writing about the children themselves. He describes “Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might/ Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height” as a “best Philosopher, and a “Mighty Prophet! Seer Blest!/ On whom those truths do rest” (8.14-15; 8.3; 8.7). Wordsworth is experimenting with the perception of knowledge and truth. Maybe as children we are the most knowledgeable philosophers who see the world as it really is. Children, in a pure and innocent form, are privy to knowledge that is lost as they grow up. In their infancy and young life they are closer to Heaven and able to view the world in different ways than adults are capable of. He toys around with this idea of children philosophers, but as the poem progresses he does shift to what the implications are for adults. Wordsworth is also concerned with the consequences of this gaining of knowledge and experience in adulthood.

Nature:

Wordsworth is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge and how this gaining of experience (at the expense of losing innocence) could be positive. Towards the end of stanza eight and the beginning of stanza nine the tone of the poem switches from the weight of the world “heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!” to “O joy!” (8.21; 9.1). There is a sudden shift into the resolution of the poem. The speaker loses some of the melancholic tone of recollection and turns to a hopeful tone of the future, a “new-fledged hope still fluttering” (9.10). There has to be some reason to live and experience the world as we do, and Wordsworth attempts to provide the reader with some consolation. He demands that we "Grieve not, rather find/ Strength in what remains behind" (10.12-13). After the majority of the stanzas present a speaker who is recollecting on a childhood that is now lost and is saddened by it, this request to not grieve seems out of place. Why should we not grieve this loss? The speaker begins to look forward to the experience that brings the “philosophic mind,” and an appreciation and respect for nature seems to be one of the reasons that we should not grieve (10.19).Stanza 11 moves on to a description of nature that is more appreciated now that the speaker has lived in the world: "I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,/ Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;/ The innocent brightness of new-born Day/ Is lovely yet;" (11.6-9). This appreciation of a sunrise and the beautiful scene of nature has developed over the years and is a reason to be joyful instead of living in a backward glancing grief. Nature is the great teacher and it can only be learned from and appreciated after one experiences the world.

Relevance to Romanticism and Revolution:

William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience

Writing during a time of great industrial and scientific revolutions, many Romantic poets were concerned with the spiritual, and intellectual growth of children into adults. The themes of innocence and experience that are present in Wordsworth's "Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" can also be found in William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. In his poetic work, Blake characterizes the two states of the human soul, innocence and experience, as possible at any time and at any age. This is similar to what Wordsworth does when he paints two very different pictures of childhood and adulthood. There is not a direct line where one loses their innocence and becomes 'of the world,' it can be a recursive process. One of the poems from this collection where these themes are explored is in Blake's poem "The Ecchoing Green," from Songs of Innocence. In this poem, the speaker also reminisces on their childhood days of innocence. As Old John watches the children play, the speaker reminds us that "And soon they all say,/ Such such were the joys/ When we all girls & boys,/ in our youth time were seen,/ On the Ecchoing Green." (Blake 179). The poem brings together a older figure looking back (Old John), and younger children running around playing on the Ecchoing Green in a similar way that Wordsworth talks about childhood and adulthood in his work. The sense of loss is also present. The reader of Blake's poem is reminded that even if they are young, they will soon be like Old John, thinking about their childhood past as if it were the most joyful time. This looking back on the past is a theme seen in the poetry of Wordsworth and Blake.

Revolutionary Language and Form

Another way that Wordsworth's poetry is revolutionary, is the way in which he experiments with content, language, and form in his poetry. This is particularly relevant to the "Immortality Ode." Traditional Pindaric Odes were traditionally very formal works written in praise of high and worthy people places, or events. Wordsworth changes this tradition by writing an Ode about a more everyday subject. He writes about one person's recollections and response to an event of their childhood, a "happy Shepherd-boy!" (3.17). Writing an ode on such a 'average' or even 'low' subject matter was not the tradition, and Wordsworth faced many negative reviews at the publication of the Ode. This speaking of a more average person in an ode was subversive at this time, and could be seen as an attempt to make a political statement regarding the exclusive language and nature of the poetic tradition.

By prof. Abdelhamid Fouda