Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
1
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.
2
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.
3
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!
4
Ye blesséd 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.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While 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 look’d 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?
5
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.
6
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.
7
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.
8
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 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 of sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thoughts 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!
9
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 realized,
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 endeavour,
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.
10
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 to-day
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.
11
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 relinquish’d one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway;
I love the brooks which down their channels fret
Even more than when I tripp’d 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.By separating the Ode into three movements, one can interpreted it as an elegy about loss, despair and resurrected hope. The first part consists of stanza 1-4, the second of 5-8 and the third of 9-11. The initial stanza makes clear that Wordsworth is feeling a profound sense of loss. He looks around him, sees the world of nature but can no longer see the “celestial light” and “the glory and the freshness of a dream” that once was permeated that world. It is not that nature has lost its beauty. “The Rainbow,” “the Rose,” “The Moon,” the “Waters,” are still beautiful. But for him “there hath past away a glory from the earth.” The words, “past away” suggest death, and within his mind Wordsworth is suffering a kind of death: a spiritual one. In stanza 4, he regrets being “sullen / While Earth herself is adorning, / This sweet May-morning…” Nevertheless, he cannot shake the sadness that is gripping him, the mournful feeling of loss overcoming him. He laments his inability to now possess “the visionary gleam” and “the glory and the dream” that he once had.
The second movement of the poem, stanza 5-8, Wordsworth recounts the origin and evolution of his despair. He purports in stanza 5 that the soul pre-exists with God and “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.” We emerge from the womb “trailing clouds of glory” and “Heaven lies about us in our infancy!” This metaphysical connection cannot be sustained in the physical world and the “Youth” who possesses the “vision splendid” grows into “the Man [who] perceives it die away.” In stanza 6, Mother “Earth” sees the despair that arises from the deprivation of this heavenly gift and does what she can to assuage that grief by helping him “Forget the glories he hath known, / And that imperial palace whence he came.” Wordsworth next imagines the young child playing games imitating adult life. This imitation only removes the child further from his unity with his heavenly origins and in stanza 8 Wordsworth asks the child, whom he now calls the “best philosopher” and “Mighty Prophet,” “Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke / The years to bring the inevitable yoke.”
Just when all seems lost, the third movement (stanzas 9-11) of the poem answers the question raised in stanza 8. Stanzas 9 and 10 reveals how the diminished man, Through the faculty of memory Wordsworth realizes he can regain a sense of the divine, those “trailing clouds of glory” that become shrouded in the “Shades of the prison-house” and “At length… / fade into the light of common day” as the young child grows into an adult. He begins stanza 9 with “O joy! that in our embers / Is something that doth live, / That nature yet remembers / What was so fugitive!” And that “something” is the divine essence possess at birth and lost as he moved toward adult life. He discovers those “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” in “The thought (memory) of his past years [that] in me doth breed / Perpetual benediction” which “Are yet the fountain light of all our day, / Are yet a master light of all our seeing.” Though he is far from his childhood and has lost the “visionary gleam” and “the power of the dream” the child still possessed, Wordsworth can attain “truths that wake,” and “… / Can in a moment travel thither, / And see the Children sport upon the shore, / And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.” The fulfillment of hope lies in what he remembers.
This discovery of hope “leaps up” in stanzas 10 and 11. However, it is a hope quite difference from the unbounded joy he felt as a child. He hears the birds “sing a joyous song! and accepts he has lost “the radiance which was once so bright” he believes there is compensation that the philosophic mind can offer:
He accepts that “nothing can bring back” the special, divine connection with nature the child experiences. Instead, Wordsworth finds a “Strength,” which he calls a “primal sympathy.” This instinctual sympathy for human beings in general and human suffering in particular replaces “the vision splendid,” which is that instinct of seeing and knowing the divine in nature when the child feels immortal. The final eight lines close the poem with a sense of transformation. The original despair over the loss of childhood insight becomes the adult insight, an ability to see what is lost as we age and to feel the profound sympathy for the inevitable human condition.