Sundus Al Ghafri
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was
one of the major English writers of the late 18th and early 19th
Century. Along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge they lead English Literature into
the Romantic Age with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads. Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Records
of Early Childhood (1807) –is one of Wordsworth’s greatest lyrical achievements.
It opens with the saying: The Child is father of the Man; / And I could wish my
days to be / Bound each to each by natural piety.
In the first
stanza, the speaker reflects of a time when nature seemed unreal and bizarre to
him, kind of like a dream, “apparelled in
celestial light,” but its gone now and those times are not coming back “the things I have seen I can see no more.”
In the second stanza he mentions the beauty of the roses, still admires the
rainbow and the sun, though the speaker always felt like something was changed "But yet I know, where'er I go, / That
there hath past away a glory from the earth."
He was filled
with sorrow and misery when he heard the birds singing and saw the lambs
jumping in the third stanza, but the nature of the waterfall and the mountain’s
echoes brings him back to the essence of life and urges the young shepherds boy
to shout and share his joy with him. In the fourth stanza, the speaker enjoys
the nature’s festival and says while the children’s play, feeling unhappy at
this time would be wrong. Still, when he sees a tree and a field it quickly
reminds him that something is missing making him question the situation, "Whither is fled the visionary gleam? /
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?"
The fifth stanza
"Our birth is but a sleep and a
forgetting." As children we experience all the joys of heaven and
nature. Human beings begin their early life with a clearer vision of the magic
of nature; it is not until we grow up that we loose that clarity and connection
with the heavens. The speaker in the sixth stanza says when man arrives on
earth it seems like everything around works against them to make them forget
where they came from, the heavens.
"Forget the glories he hath known, and that imperial palace whence he
came."
He imagines a
six year-old boy, in the seventh stanza, and predicts the boy’s future. From
his parent’s love for him to the experiences in his life he’ll learn from. "And with new joy and pride / The
little Actor cons another par," yet he will go on living a life
that has already been lived, it’ll be an imitation of all human lives from
attending a weddings, a funerals, festivals and so on.
In the eighth
stanza he addresses the boy and calls him a philosopher. The speaker is confused by the child’s choice
to grow up so fast into adulthood. His youth allows him to be closer to the
heavens, why want a life with endless imitations when he can have the heavens
glories? The ninth stanza, the speaker is filled with joy at the thought of
reconnecting to his young early life through his childhood memories.
“Hence is 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 might water rolling evermore.”
He calls to the creatures of nature that
earlier made him sad, in the tenth stanza, to sing out their sounds to him "Then
sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!" even though he acknowledges the loose of
nature’s glory he is relieved by the fact that he can trust his memories. In the final stanza, the speaker says that
his love of nature is the source of his memories of a life he longs for. Even
the simplest blooming of a flower can spur up the deepest memories, "To me the meanest flower that blows
can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
The whole poem is about guilt and wish fullness; Wordwoths is saddened
by the fact that humanity has lost its connection to the youth. A child’s life
is the closest thing to a heavens life, yet the child is eager to grow up and
have a life of a grown up, which infuriates Wordworth. The nature of a May’s
morning manages to relax him and let him enjoy a peace of heaven on earth, even
though it comes and goes with the seasons.
Our memories are the only real link to the heaven’s beauty as we enter
adulthood. When we are consumed in our life’s worries from thinking about our futures
and how it’ll look like, we can fall back on the pieces of memories that we
accumulated during our years of childhood.
William
Wordsworth. Wikipedia.
Wordsworth's
Poetical Works Summary and Analysis.
