Page 178 - DENG201_ENGLISH_II

English - II

Notes The second movement begins in stanza V by answering the question of stanza IV by describing a
Platonic system of preexistence. The narrator explains how humans start in an ideal world that slowly
fades into a shadowy life:
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; (lines 58-70)
Before the light fades away as the child matures, the narrator emphasises the greatness of the child
experiencing the feelings. By the beginning of stanza VIII, the child is described as a great individual,
and the stanza is written in the form of a prayer that praises the attributes of children:
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; (lines 108-117)
The end of stanza VIII brings about the end of a second movement within the poem. The glories of
nature are only described as existing in the past, and the child’s understanding of morality is already
causing them to lose what they once had:
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! (lines 129-131)
The questions in Stanza IV are answered with words of despair in the second movement, but the
third movement is filled with joy. Stanza IX contains a mixture of affirmation of life and faith as it
seemingly avoids discussing what is lost. The stanza describes how a child is able to see what others
do not see because children do not comprehend mortality, and the imagination allows an adult to
intimate immortality and bond with his fellow man:
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,

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