Ode , On Intimations Of Immortality Analysis

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 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;

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 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.



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 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.



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.

.: :.

could we please learn how to spell and use english properly? wow.

| Posted on 2008-10-22 | by a guest

.: :.

Dear friends,
If you are a teenager, perhaps you will only understand this poem as you grow old, but surely some of you have already felt the "effects of the prison-house" which close on the growing boy. We are born within us with memories of heaven, which we carry with us into are childhood. Everything in life is new, wonderous, beautiful, amazing. As we grow through the stages of life mentioned in our poem, we geing to lose or "forget" out primal (first) bliss and happiness in nature, and all the wonderful things in life. But when we are older, we will have sudden memories as an adult, of what it was like to feel as a child. These happy "intimation" or memories sustain as, as we feel death approaching. We gain strength from what remains behind. Thus, we can approach death we joy, knowing that we will hopefully come back to the beginning of the life cycle again.
IF you are young and reading this, treasure each and every day and moment of your life.That is why this poem has to teach you.

| Posted on 2008-08-07 | by a guest

.: :.

This Ode is about loss and grief, which finally leads to acceptance, and gain. Willian Wordsworth uses sensual imagery of the purity and harmony of Nature and Childhood to express his personal beliefs about human nature.

| Posted on 2008-03-02 | by a guest

.: Ugh. :.

Poems like these are the reason why students suddenly come to school with a gun and shoot people. I would too if I were less sane.

1. They're extremely lengthy.
2. The English used is too complicated. Sure some of you may understand, but I'm sorry if we don't speak like this from day to day. They're expecting us to understand this crap, although they know we don't speak a lick like this.

Well, I salute you if you like this type of writing, but I just cannot come to understand it. Sure, the explanations sound nice but, it's sad that I need to read an explanation in order to know what the author is saying. Straight-forward is the way to go.

| Posted on 2007-05-29 | by a guest

.: heart touching :.

I love the 1st stanza in which he says "there was a time when meadow........i now can see no more" awesome! In this poem he proved his belief about poetry "Poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings which takes its origin from emotions recollected in tranquility with a colouring of imagination!" Marvellous words said by this great nature loves wordworth!

| Posted on 2007-05-27 | by a guest

.: :.

William Wordsworth is a British born poet in the time of the Romantic period. Wordsworth poets were mostly involved with nature. It is said that Wordsworth saw nature in a way that many others could not see. Wordsworth poems were very based on nature and what nature meant to him. And his understanding of nature. He would pay plenty of time. He would write ever thing that is involved with nature. For example he would write about the tress, plants. And the motion of the plants, the weather even animal because he believe that was all part of nature.

That is why Wordsworth was able to write the kind of poetry he made and why he made it. The poem titled “ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY” is in which Wordsworth explain who human change over time. In the fact that when you are a child you are very connected with nature. But as we get old we attend to forget nature and become more with other responsibility of adulthood. In this poem Wordsworth uses a lot of imagery to get his point off to the reader. Being that when he is writing about nature. He wants us to be able see what he sees. Also be able feel what he feels. And understand that he is trying to get to us. And there is proof of this in many stanzas.

In the very first stanza Wordsworth talks about his surrounding. And the time in which ever thing was like a dream in which nature was at it fines point and being. When he stated “The gory and freshness of a dream”. There is everything that makes nature what it is. But then he states that “By night or day The things which I have seen I can see no more." As to tell us that day by day nature the is losing touch with nature.
The second stanza starts with Wordsworth uses strong imagery to explain the things. That he is seeing. Form the rainbow that came and goes. To the roses that have the sun that gave them birth. “The sunshine is a glorious birth”. But again he feels that he is going to lose this touch with nature as he grows older with the falling and rising sun.

In the third stanza Wordsworth changes this senses of view being that while he was listening to the birds singing and watching some lambs play. He suddenly becomes sad and fearful. “To me alone there came a thought of grief”. But the sadness does not last to long be that the sound of nearby waterfalls and the echoes of the mountains with the gusting of the winds restored him to strength. Then he states that the earth is gay (happy).

Fourth stanza is started with Wordsworth talking about nature's creatures explains his feeling by says that his heart participates in their joyful festival. “My heart is at your festival”. And for him to feel any kind of grief on such a beautiful May morning would be him doing wrong to nature. He feel a great deal of joy watching children play and laugh among the flowers. But then suddenly a sad cloud comes again over his head again while watching a tree in the field. While looking at the tree he hears on tree saying to the other something. "Both of them speak something that is gone" and the same with the pansy(flower) at his feet does the same. He then asks what has happened to the visionary gleam. “Whither is fled the visionary gleam?”. "Where is it now, the glory and the dream?". As if to question himself as to what is happen to appearance of nature. A question that he later on himself answers.

The fifth stanza is when Wordsworth leaves nature as a whole and goes in deep with the appearance of nature. He writes that human life is merely a sleep and is forgetting important things. “Our birth is but asleep and a forgetting”. "Heaven lies about us in our infancy!". In this line Wordsworth explains that as children we are still able remember some memory of that place (heaven). Which is the reason that the life of a little child on the earth is filled with magic. But slow as the baby passes through boyhood to young adulthood and into manhood he sees that magic die. Also we tend to fall apart for nature .We then are less and less appearance of nature. In the six stanza Wordsworth explains. That because of earthly material we as humans forget what truly is need in life. We forget the true meaning of our arrive the earth.

Seventh stanza starts with Wordsworth writing about a six-year-old boy imagining what his life may just be like. And writes about the love his mother and father would have for him. Then Wordsworth describe the way in which a young boy leaves nature. Because now he has to deal with adulthood and a whole different kind life. Then Wordsworth explains that the boy starts to thing "some little plan or chart,". Now that the boy is an adult he has dreams based on adult ideas. For example Wordsworth writes that the boy will plan "a wedding or a festival". "a mourning or a funeral.". “And this hath now this heart”. Just many of the think any adult think about as he or she is growing up. And as the boy keeps growing in adulthood Wordsworth would state that the boy is loss touch with nature.

In this stanza the eighth stanza Wordsworth states the little boy as if he is a prophet “might prophet! Seer blest!”. To Wordsworth the boy is a prophet the one who will lead people back with nature. In the ninth stanza Wordsworth goes back in to the memories of his childhood. And remembers the enjoyment of be one with nature. That is when Wordsworth expressed a great amount of joy. “o joy!“ To know that what ever happens he will be still able to get the same joy that he did so long ago again being that he will have nature with him at all times.

In the tenth stanza with this thought Wordsworth become very happy. And to show his happiness Wordsworth says the birds and other animals. To share there happiness he asks the animal to experiences there feeling any way they know. But then again he is stricken by the thought that he this old now. But again with the thought that he has been with nature all the years make him happy again. Being that he has a lot of memory of childhood and nature to remember and feel the joy like he felt before. In the final stanza Wordsworth states that he will forever be in love with nature and all of it beauty. For at one time he was a child. And the love of nature was with him form now and it will be with him to the day he dies.
Wordsworth love of nature can be found in many of his poems. But why he should a connect to nature was not known. To find that answer for yourself you can simple read the poem. Being that Wordsworth talk about many topic from what nature is for a child to adulthood. He explain why we are connected with nature at childhood .And how in adulthood with many responsibly we get separated from nature. What we can do to get in touch with nature once again. For nature is our second mother.


| Posted on 2006-04-08 | by Approved Guest

.: Boring! :.

In this poem, Wordsworth talks a whole load of cack. I think poetry is the most boring thing in the whole universe, especially this poem! Anyone who enjoys this kind of thing is a pompous, idiotic pratt who thinks they're incredibly intelligent for wasting their precious time reading and analysing this total and utter poop. So two fingers to all you stupid so called intellectuals who enjoy this kind of pathetic nonsense.

I personally much prefer the poem below. It has a much more interesting content. I think the poet who wrote it is truly brilliant.

| Posted on 2006-01-21 | by Approved Guest

.: :.

In this poem, Wordsworth is longing to return to his childhood. He looks at youth and becomes filled with a grief and a sadness that he can no longer be part of that imagination and excitment youth provides.Youth is a time which is full of dreams and you dont have to be sleeping to experience dreams. you can be wide awake.At various points throughout this poem he claims he can feel the bliss and the joy of the children but he is only fooling himself. When you mature, that magic of youth and the imagination, unfortunately disapear and they never return. In this poem, therefore Wordswoth is begging the youth to enjoy the magnbificant joy the imagination can provide before it is to late!

| Posted on 2005-12-02 | by Approved Guest

.: -- :.

'great' people like poets use satire and wit to criticise the society and its people(here not to harm theM but to teach them a lesson or to make them realise on some important fact). 'mad' and 'sick' people use filth, not to criticise but to attack or to make the 'great' people collapse mentally. it is obvious to any human being who possesses 'human qualities' that some of these 'barbarians' show thier jealousy and foolishness by attacking people without any solid reason. may be due to people and the false,immature attitudes like these that the poets like Wordsworth, blake and shelly wanted to lead a movement to change the false society. i must say to all the people who have contributed to the success of this page, that please donot let any idiot block your way. take what they say to you as an additional inspiration. pity on these inhuman poeple since they have no brain, no family and no back-bone.(ATTENTION-IF YOU EVER COME ACROOS SUCH A PERSON, PLEASE HELP THEM TO CONSULT A PSYCHIATRIC. THEY BADLY NEED HELP AND GUIDANCE TO BACOME A 'HUMAN BEING'..)

| Posted on 2005-11-26 | by Approved Guest