Analysis of William Wordsworths poem

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

(Lines 60-85)
Wordsworth wrote this splendid masterpiece in iambic lines, in eleven variable ode
stanzas with frequent shifts in rhyme scheme and rhythm. In the fifth stanza, Wordsworth
introduces us to his belief that our life on earth is but a fading shadow, and he is guided by
emanation theory:
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:
Our soul, our lifes star, comes from afar; it dwells and arises from divinitys realm,
not from material world. Upon our birth, the soul enters its prison-our body. It is the body that
represents our souls earthly cage, because it temporarily restrains the soul from coming back
to its genuine home. Having been born, we forget who we are and where the imperial place
we came from was, which is why the author refers to birth as sleep and forgetting. After a
while, the dreams, the vision, the glory, the true splendour of life and celestial light are gone,
and this causes the authors suffering.
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!
Even though as adults we cant recall our true origin, our soul yearns to come back
home, because it did not arrive here as tabula rasa (utterly naked), it came with memories of
its former existence in Heavenly kingdom. That is why he says that Heaven lies about us at
our infancy. As children, we can still recognise those pieces of divinity we were once part of,
we recognise them in the nature around us. Here we have a trace of one of the ideas of
romanticism - that children are often more clever than adults, that their perception is not
inaccurate, selective and it does not alter depending on lifes miseries. Their perception is true
and clear, because children are not limited by any criteria, social norms, and therefore their
grasp of the world that surrounds them is plain and theyre capable of making honest and
reasonable decisions. Their souls are pure, unsoiled by malice, and so Wordsworths main
idea that the child is father of man is entirely justified.
In the following verses one should notice the degradation form boyhood and young
adulthood into manhood:
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
***
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

As the time passes, the boy becomes a man, and gradually, all the magical divinity he
could once recognise drifts away into the everlasting mist. All the memories become only
shadowy recollections. He ceases to see and enjoy natures charms. The glory, the light that
the child could once see is not the same light that is now visible to man. The celestial light
once seen by a free spirit and a pure soul is now just a dead light of a common day. We
continue livingour ordinary lives, occupied with our ordinary jobs and material things.
Devastating as it may be, we merely survive, let alone live.
In the sixth stanza, the author says that the earthly pleasures conspire to help us forget
the glories whence we came:
And, even with something of a mothers 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.
Here Wordsworth gave a description of a connection between the Earth which he
refers to as the homely nurseand the Man to whom he refers to as her foster child, and the
reason for this is rather obvious-we are here only temporary, the Earth is not our true Parent,
our home, it may have merely adopted us, but we are here like inmates, deprived of the
authentic existence. We were ripped off from our true being, and though we brought all the
knowledge from our ancestors and lost it, we still remain a part of this earthly world, even
though we feel forsaken. The Earth helps us by offering its unique pleasures, which makes it
easier for us to drown our profound sorrow and grief, and forget that imperial palace whence
we came.
It seems to me that we are expected to endure the burden of earthly life regardless how
fragile our shoulders may be. We often dont determine our priorities, or we do it in a wrong
way. No wonder what black roots are planted into our souls, no wonder we suffer while were
Earths inmates. Blinded by material values and alienated from the authentical existence, we
seem to be driven mad by immoral standards were expected to follow, and torn asunder by
what some still call everyday life. In his poetry, Wordsworth expresses this idea I particularly
liked - that happiness and truth are found within each individual depending on ones attitude
towards life, death and existence. I dare say thats where our comfort dwells. He concludes his
ode claiming that though nothing can bring back the splendour, we should not grieve, but find
strength to live and go on and let the child in us survive, for it is only then that we cease to
fear the memory of youth and years we left behind us, it is only then that the memories dont
cause despair but joy. The verses of Wordsworths Immortality Ode bring us back to that
one rule we tend to erase and forget, which actually matters:

You dont have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body .
Anela Mujan, 19-B