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Jayatee Bhattacharya, Lovely Professional University Unit 27: William Wordsworth: Ode to Intimations of Immortality

Unit 27: William Wordsworth: Notes

Ode to Intimations of Immortality

CONTENTS
Objectives

Introduction
27.1 Ode: Intimations of Immortality

27.1.1 Text
27.1.2 Summary

27.1.3 Form

27.1.4 Commentary
27.1.5 Analysis

27.2 Summary
27.3 Keywords

27.4 Review Questions
27.5 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit, you will be able to:
• Discuss the text, summary and analysis of ode: Intimations of Immortality.

Introduction

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood is a poem by William
Wordsworth, completed in 1804 and published in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807). The poem was
completed in two parts, with the first four stanzas written among a series of poems composed in
1802 about childhood. The first part of the poem was completed on 27 March 1802 and a copy was
provided to Wordsworth’s friend and fellow poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who responded with
his own poem, Dejection: An Ode, in April. The fourth stanza of the ode ends with a question, and
Wordsworth was finally able to answer it with 7 additional stanzas completed in early 1804. It was
first printed as Ode in 1807, and it was not until 1815 that it was edited and reworked to the version
that is currently known, Ode: Intimation of Immortality.
The poem is an irregular Pindaric ode in 11 stanzas that combines aspects of Coleridge’s Conversation
poems, the religious sentiments of the Bible and the works of Saint Augustine, and aspects of the
elegiac and apocalyptic traditions. It is split into three movements: the first of 4 stanzas discusses
concerns about lost vision, the second of 4 stanzas describes how age causes man to lose sight of the
divine, and the third of 3 stanzas is hopeful in that the memory of the divine allows us to sympathise

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