In Wordsworth says in his Ode: Intimations that
there is a fading of glory (see lines 1-9, 17-18). In a short
response, indicate why this is basically the theme of this poem. What
does he mean?
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 flowers
blooming, and children and animals happily playing around him, he is
melancholy. 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, the flower reminds him. In the fifth stanza,
he indicates what is 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 mourning the fact that his life, even his childhood,
was 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 mourns that though he can capture glimpse of
this glory by remembering his childhood, he can never again renew the
glory that has faded.
