Page 184 - DENG201_ENGLISH_II

English - II

Notes To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Conclusion
The Immortality Ode remains not merely the greatest, but the one really, dazzlingly, supremely great
thing Wordsworth ever did. “Its theory has been scorned or impugned by some; parts of it have been
called nonsense by critics of weight. But, sound or unsound, sense or nonsense, it is poetry, and
magnificent poetry, from the first line to the last—poetry than which there is none better in any
language, poetry such as there is not perhaps more than a small volume-full in all languages.”**
Interpretation
Wordsworth’s poem expresses the view that the human soul exists first in heaven. When united at birth
with a body, it brings with it impressions of heaven, as the following passage from the poem indicates:
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
These “trailing clouds” remain in a growing child as “intimations of immortality,” or memories of
his celestial abode. However, when the child passes into his adolescent and teen years, his increasing
exposure to the material world and the beauty of nature dims his memories of his heavenly beginning.
By the time he enters adulthood, all but the merest recollection of his previous existence disappears.
(In the ancient world, Plato believed that the human soul existed before birth in an incorporeal realm.
Although it possessed vast knowledge, its memory of this knowledge failed after it united with a
body at birth. A human being then occupied himself with restoring this knowledge through education.)
Nevertheless, this faint memory is enough to light for him the path back to heaven:
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing
Themes
Children See the Light
The speaker of the poem maintains paradoxically that the more a person ages—the more educated
and experienced he becomes—the less he knows about heaven and God. A very young child, on the
other hand, is a fountain of insight and enlightenment about the supernal world. After all, says the
poem’s speaker, a child’s soul is a recent arrival from paradise. Memories of his heavenly abode are
still vivid to him. He still sees the light of the eternal God.
Faith
There is in all of us a heavenly spark that can ignite the fire of faith to support us through troubled
times, keeping alive the thought of reuniting with the Creator in the celestial realm.
Ennui
Humans become jaded and world-weary after losing their childhood innocence and enthusiasm.
Meter, Feet, and Line Length
Wordsworth uses iambic feet throughout the poem. An iambic foot (or iamb) consists of a pair of
syllables, the first one unstressed and the second stressed. For example, in the fifth line of the first
stanza, the first two syllables (The GLOR) make up the first iambic foot, and the second two syllables
(y AND) make up the second iambic foot. The meter of the poem varies from dimeter to hexameter.
(A line with two iambic feet makes up a dimeter; three feet, a trimeter; four feet, a tetrameter; five
feet, a pentameter; and six feet a hexameter.)

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