Ode: Intimations of Immortality from... - Questions/Analysis

 

 

 

 

 

16 Feb. 2005

 

 

Ode:

Intimations of Immortality from

Recollections of Early Childhood

 

William Wordsworth

 

Response topics for “Ode”:

 

 

 

1.  What problem does poet face in stage I - III?

    How is this similar to Shelley?

 

            Both Shelley and Wordsworth faced the mutable world that felt fear from its dark reality. once they have seen the Intellectual Beauty, Intimations of Immortality as a Platonic ideal world, but they couldn’t find it any more. Wordsworth recollected his childhood as a happy Shepherd-boy who had felt the celestial light in glorious nature, just like in Shelley’s Stanza V, ‘While yet a boy… at that sweet time when winds are wooing, All vital things that wake to bring, News of birds and blossoming.”

 

 

 

2.  What’s similarity/dissimilarity are these between Stanza II and Plato?

 

           Verse, ‘The Rainbow comes and goes’ is similar to Plato’s shadow, and ‘Waters on a starry night, Are beautiful and fair’ is also similar to Plato’s ‘reflections of him in the water.’ Moreover, ‘The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where’er I go’ are similar with Plato’s sun light, the sight of the upper world; yet eyes are dazzled and not be able to see anything at all until accustomed to the sight.

 

 

 

 

3.  What is role of senses in Stanza VI - VII?

    How might this relate to Plato, Buddha and Bacon?

 

           Wordsworth felt the senses cause bondage. It’s more related with Buddha. “Of his betters he is envious, with his equals there is strife; To inferior he is haughty, mad for praise and wroth at blame; Is there ever any goodness in these foolish common men?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4.  How does Wordsworth solve the problem (introduced in Stanzas I – V)?

 

Upon the growing Boy trailing clouds of glory-searching for the truth, he found God who is our home. Traveling in nature until he found his vision splendid, then he let Man’s perceivingness die away-get rid of earthly mind; finally, he faded into the light of common day-retrieved our life’s Star, heavenly gloriousness.