In Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood, the narrator is standing in a
field in a beautiful day in May and although the sun shines and the
meadow is beautiful, the narrator is melancholy. The flowers bloom
and he watches children and animals happily playing around him, but
he is inconsolable and nostalgic for his childhood sense of glory.
The narrator mourns for a time when nature was greater, bolder, and
communicated with him more. He thinks back on his childhood and finds
some glimmer of that happiness, but he cannot entirely recapture it.
In the fifth stanza, he indicates the chief reason for his sadness:
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting…/ trailing
clouds of glory do we come / From God, who is our home...” (59,
65-66). The narrator is conveying the idea that life, even a glory
filled childhood, is merely the dissipation of an earlier, better
existence, where life was pure and joyful and completely in league
with the spirit of nature. The narrator laments that although he can
capture glimpse of this glory by remembering his childhood, he can
never entirely renew the glory that has faded.
In the ninth stanza, however, the author experiences a brief
recapturing of that glory. My examination of lines 147 to 158, which
occur in the second half of the ninth stanza, are a part of this
revival of glory in the ninth stanza, and, as such, represent a
resurgence of beauty and naturalistic appreciation. The tone of the
ninth stanza rises, with some hesitations, and the tone continues to
rise throughout the rest of the ode. Line 147 and 148 are closely
interlocked with the first part of the ninth stanza, so understanding
this thought correctly requires referring back to the preceding
lines. Lines 143 to 147 discuss how Wordsworth is hopeful for
children but for “those obstinate questionings of sense”
(144). Line 147 directly precedes the thought in line 148, that is,
the object that is moving is the creature of 147. This “creature”
can be interpreted as one’s soul or spirit, because it
“vanishes” (147) and “moves about in worlds not
realized” (148), and is only vaguely understood (146)- all of
which are qualities of what Wordsworth defines as a spirit.
The “high instincts” of line 149 may be yet another
reference to the soul, since Words worth believed the soul inside us
was so transcendent and yet an intuitive part of us. Our “mortal
nature” may refer to the physical, natural man. In Lines 149
and 150 the narrator describes how much greater the spirit is above
the physical. So great, in fact, that when the physical man comes in
contact with the spirit, the physical man “trembles” in
awe of the spirit and acts as if it has be caught committing some
wrong against the spirit.
The “but” in line 151 signals a transition, a break from
the thought of the preceding lines. “those first attractions”
also in line 151 may also be referring to the previous thought, and
drawing the description of the exchange between spirit and natural
into a new thought. It is also likely that, since this is a poem
focusing largely on how the spirit is gloriously known in childhood,
“those first affections” refers to a childhood of natural
glory. Line 151 may be interpreted, “but for that first
childhood interaction between spirit and nature”.
Line 152 seems to qualify line 151. After describing the spirit and
natural interaction as “first affections, the narrator now
calls them “shadowing recollections” (152), as if he is
showing hesitation in singing the laude of youth.
Line 153 and 14 go on to expand this thought: whatever these
experiences were in the past, they are our “fountain light”
for the rest of our life, or “all our day” (154).
Fountain light seems to be a word that either has passes out of
linguistic memory or was coined by Wordsworth, but the following
line, line 155 seems to help clarify it’s meaning when the
communication with soul in childhood, the “fountain light”
is described as the master-light of all our seeing. In other words,
although we can never again experience the glory of a soul recently
abandoned from heaven (151), that shadowy recollection of line 152
remains our headlights or guiding beacon throughout our entire life
(154) and it helps us navigate through a spiritual world in which we
would otherwise be blinded to (155).
Line 156 continues the description of the role of our childhood
memories. The narrator relates that it is these remembrances of
childhood glory that hold us up and “cherish” us. The
narrator ascribes to this memory that it can make “Our noisy
years seem moments in the being /Of the eternal Silence”
(157-158). In other words, if we comprehend this masked glory, it
makes us realized that our long lives we find so busy are really
passing seconds in the face of the one who holds eternity. In the
truth, the colon in line 158 instructs us, reside eternal (159)
truths that awake us to glory.
The second half of the ninth stanza of Wordsworth’s
Ode:Intimations of Immortality is one that is sadly hopeful and
reminiscent of childhood glory. The ten lines between 148 and 158
help demonstrate to the reader just how powerful memories can be.
