Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

William Wordsworth

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1807

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Childhood

The speaker in Wordsworth’s “Ode” believes childhood is the stage of life when humans are closest to the divine: before practical concerns of adult life weaken and break their mystical sense of connection with everything in nature. To children, “meadow, grove, and stream. / The earth, and every common sight” (Lines 1-2) appear covered with “celestial [heavenly] light” (Line 4). This sensation is not a product of religious education, but the result of pure wonder and awe at the richness and beauty of nature, which has “[t]he glory and the freshness of a dream” (Line 5). The speaker mourns his own loss of that spiritual quality, but he recognizes and cherishes it in the children around him, like the “happy Shepherd-boy” (Line 35), whose joyful shouts join other natural sounds made by the birds, the waterfall, the wind in a celebration of the natural world’s splendor.

In the eighth stanza, the speaker praises the child for their “[s]oul’s immensity” (Line 109) and calls them the “best Philosopher” (Line 110) and “Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!” (Line 114). In other words, the speaker perceives this spiritual quality of childhood as greater than the rational or oracular wisdom of even the wisest adults. The adults have lost the child’s sensation of “[i]mmortality” (Line 118), their indifference to death, and the child’s intuitive wonder and joy. However, even sporadic recollection and appreciation of that childhood glory helps the speaker to see beyond pragmatic pursuits of ordinary existence. That is the meaning of Wordsworth’s famous line from “My Heart Leaps Up” (included in the epigraph to “Ode”): “The child is father of the man.” The man’s spiritual health depends on his ability to maintain some of the child’s original sense of life’s glory.

Transcendental View of Nature

One name Wordsworth gives to the quality that permeates childhood yet is hard to reach in adulthood is “natural piety” (see the epigraph to “Ode”). Piety is a feeling of devotion and reverence and has strong religious connotations. It is easy to assume “piety” here implies religious piety, as this is typically the context in which the term is used. However, in the place where one might expect the adjective “religious,” Wordsworth places the adjective “natural” instead. Indeed, the whole poem expresses a view of nature that is essentially religious, or transcendental. The verb “transcend” means to move beyond or rise above something, and the adjective “transcendental” refers to that which is beyond and above the physical world—a spiritual or supernatural realm. In a sense, the concept of transcendental nature is an oxymoron (contradiction in terms): How can the physical world also be spiritual, or nature be supernatural? Yet that is the implication of many passages in the poem. Natural landscapes are covered in “celestial light” (Line 4); the “heavens laugh with” (Line 38) those who celebrate nature’s spring reawakening, and the nature-loving youth is “Nature’s Priest” (Line 72) who worships nature like a religious priest worships God. Wordsworth does not see this view of nature as self-contradictory because he believes in a mystical connection between human beings and nature. To him, nature is the source of what is best about humanity—a moral teacher and guardian, as well as the answer to the question of the meaning of life. In short, Wordsworth’s poetry presents nature as having divine qualities. (For more about Wordsworth’s religious views, see Religious Context. For a poem which develops these ideas even more explicitly, “Tintern Abbey,” see Further Resources.)

Primal Sympathy and the Philosophic Mind

Even though the phrases “primal sympathy” (Line 181) and “the philosophic mind” (Line 186) are only used once in Wordsworth’s “Ode,” they embody much of what the poem is about. Primal sympathy is “what remains behind” (Line 180) after the childhood days of seeing “splendour in the grass” and “glory in the flower” (Line 178) are over. Adults cannot experience nature with the same mystical sense of radiance and bliss, but there is a trace of that feeling that “having been must ever be” (Line 182)—it persists in the recollections and the hearts of adults, who should cherish and nurture it. That primal sympathy may lack the exuberance of the child’s original passion for life, but it is enriched by adult experience, including the experience of “human suffering” (Line 184). However, these experiences can result in “soothing thoughts” (Line 183): acceptance and calm, rather than grief and despair, in the face of the inevitable. Such fortitude and serenity can be bolstered by “the faith that looks through death” (Line 185), or the belief that mortal life is not the limit of human existence.

Some religious people believe in the survival of the soul; others find comfort in the thought that their memory will live on while their bodies become reincorporated into the great cycle of nature. Some may find other ways to reach the peace of mind in the face of death, but they all have in common the philosophic mind: the wisdom to accept life, imperfect and painful as it can be, but also to maintain that trace of the child’s guileless wonder at life’s beauty. For Wordsworth, that primal sympathy is an indispensable component of the philosophic mind.