Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (Summary and analysis)
Introduction
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood is one of the most profound and philosophical poems written by William Wordsworth, the leading figure of the English Romantic movement. First published in 1807, this poem reflects Wordsworth’s deep concern with the loss of childhood’s spiritual vision and the connection to nature and the divine.
Full Title: Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
By: William Wordsworth
Stanza 1
Text:
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
Summary:
Wordsworth begins by expressing a sense of loss. He recalls a time when nature—meadows, groves, streams—seemed filled with divine beauty and wonder. Back then, the world looked like it was dressed in heavenly light. But now, that glorious vision is gone; no matter where he looks, whether day or night, he no longer sees the world as he once did.
Stanza 2
Text:
The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
Summary:
Although natural beauty remains—the rainbow, the rose, the moon, stars reflected in water, sunshine—Wordsworth feels that a deeper, spiritual "glory" has departed from the earth. Nature still pleases the senses, but it no longer stirs the soul with the same divine light it once did.
Stanza 3
Text:
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,—
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy!
Summary:
Despite the cheerful sights and sounds of spring—the birds, lambs, waterfalls, and winds—Wordsworth feels grief because he knows something divine has been lost. However, he finds strength in expressing this emotion. He decides not to let his sorrow overshadow the season's joy. The natural world rejoices, and he calls upon a joyful child (the shepherd-boy) to shout in happiness, reflecting the innocence and vitality of youth.
Stanza 4
Text:
Ye blessèd Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his mother’s arm:—
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!—
But there’s a Tree, of many, one,
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Summary:
Wordsworth participates in nature’s celebration—he sees the skies laugh, the children picking flowers, and feels a connection to their joy. But even amid this beauty, some things (like a certain tree and field) remind him of what’s lost—the "visionary gleam," the divine sense of life he felt in youth. This sense of wonder and connection to immortality has faded.
Stanza 5
Text:
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;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Summary:
Wordsworth presents the idea that our souls come from a divine, eternal home—God. At birth, we don't arrive empty but with a "cloud of glory" from the divine realm. In infancy, we are closest to Heaven. But as we grow older, the "prison-house" of the physical world closes in. The child still sees glimpses of divine light; the youth, though more distant, retains a spiritual vision. Eventually, as adults, we lose sight of that divine presence, and life becomes ordinary, losing its original wonder.
Stanza 6
Text:
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a Mother’s mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
Summary:
Here, Earth is seen as a nurturing mother who provides joys and pleasures to distract the soul from its heavenly origin. Though Earth’s intention is kind—like a mother trying to comfort her child—she unconsciously helps us forget the divine glory we once knew, and the "imperial palace" (Heaven) from which our souls came.
Stanza 7
Text:
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years’ Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where ‘mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,
With light upon him from his Father’s eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his “humorous stage”
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Summary:
Wordsworth describes a six-year-old child, full of joy and divine light, playing and acting out parts of adult life—weddings, funerals, love, and business. Children imitate life around them as if their only purpose is to rehearse for the adult world. This "imitation" gradually pulls them away from their spiritual origin. Their divine light begins to dim as they take on the roles and responsibilities of human life.
Stanza 8
Text:
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;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o’er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy Being’s height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The Years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
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!
Summary:
The child, despite his small size, contains a vast and immortal soul. He is called a philosopher and a prophet—he still possesses divine truth that adults strive their whole lives to rediscover. However, the child too will soon forget this spiritual truth, burdened by the “yoke” of worldly life. Customs and habits will eventually weigh down his soul like a heavy frost, and he will become like all other adults—detached from the divine origin.
Stanza 9
Text:
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts, before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
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;
Uphold us—cherish—and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Summary:
Wordsworth now turns to hope. Even in adulthood, some divine spark—"something that doth live"—still remains in us, like glowing embers. Nature helps us remember fragments of what we’ve lost. He feels blessed not just for childhood joy, but for those deep spiritual experiences—mysteries, questions, and instincts—that hint at something beyond this world. These fleeting glimpses of our divine origin give light to our lives, give meaning to time, and connect us to something eternal. They are eternal truths that no hardship or sorrow can fully erase.
Stanza 10
Text:
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,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Summary:
In peaceful moments, even though we are far from Heaven (the "immortal sea"), our souls can still remember it. We can spiritually return to that divine place from which we came. We may envision children playing on its shores and hear the eternal sound of its waters. This momentary reconnection brings comfort and peace.
Stanza 11 (Final stanza)
Text:
Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Summary:
Wordsworth concludes with peace and gratitude. Though the "splendour in the grass" and "glory in the flower" of youth can never return, he finds strength in what remains—sympathy, memory, spiritual faith, and deep understanding brought by maturity. Even without the childhood vision of divine light, nature still holds power and meaning for him. He now loves nature more deeply and reflectively than before. Even the smallest flower can move him profoundly, stirring emotions too deep for words or tears.
SHORT ANALYSIS
In this poem, William Wordsworth reflects on how the special connection we have with nature and the divine in childhood fades as we grow older. The poem is based on the belief that as children, we are closer to a higher, spiritual world, but as we become adults, we lose this vision. Wordsworth expresses sadness over this loss, but also finds hope and comfort in the memory of the past.
Throughout the poem, Wordsworth contrasts the pure, joyful view of the world that children have with the more practical and dull view that adults develop. He suggests that, even though we may lose the magical perception of childhood, we can still find beauty and meaning in life through nature, memory, and human connection.
In the end, the poet accepts that while we can never fully return to the innocence of childhood, the feelings and truths we once experienced still live within us and can guide us through life. The poem celebrates the power of memory, the wisdom that comes with age, and the connection between the soul and nature.