Ode: Intimations of Immortality
The PoemIn “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” William Wordsworth writes in the complicated stanza forms and
irregular rhythms that are typical of the ode form. The 205 lines are divided into eleven stanzas of varying
lengths and rhyme schemes. In the title, Wordsworth attempts to summarize and simplify the rich
philosophical content of the poem.
The poem begins with an epigraph taken from an earlier poem by Wordsworth: “The Child is father of the
Man;/ And I could wish my days to be/ Bound each to each by natural piety.” In this section of “My Heart
Leaps Up,” the speaker hopes that, in his maturity, he can maintain an intimate connection to the world,
similar to the bond that he had in his own childhood. Since the “Child is father of the Man,” people should
respect the child in them as much as they are bound to their own fathers.
The first two stanzas of the poem quickly establish the problem that Wordsworth, the first-person speaker,
faces: “There was a time” when the earth was charged with magnificence in the poet’s eyes, when every
common element “did seem/ Appareled in celestial light,” but that time has gone. The ode begins in elegiac
fashion, with the poet mourning because “there hath passed away a glory from the earth.”
Oddly enough, this problem seems almost resolved in stanza 3 when Wordsworth announces that “a timely
utterance” (which is never revealed) relieves his grief. Critics have never decided definitively what that
“timely utterance” could be, but all agree that Wordsworth seems tremendously healed by it. He boldly
predicts that “No more shall grief of mine the season wrong.” The poem, which began in generalizations,
becomes focused on a particular day in May, the heart of which makes “every Beast keep holiday.” Stanza 4
continues this celebratory mode for another fifteen lines. The formerly sullen Wordsworth now senses “the
fullness of [the] bliss” of the “blesséd Creatures” and the joy of the “happy Shepherd-boy,” the children
culling flowers, or the infant “on his Mother’s arm.”
The poem shifts suddenly, however, with the simple connective “But” in line 52. Despite the spring revelry
of which Wordsworth says, “I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!” the poem shifts into a melancholy mode: “—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.” Wordsworth returns to the elegiac tone of the first two stanzas when he asks, “Whither is fled the
visionary gleam?” The poem leaves the joyful sounds of May and tries to answer this question by turning to
philosophical issues. Stanzas 5 through 9 track the complex musings of Wordsworth as he tries to explain
what happens in adulthood to “the glory and the dream” of youth.
Stanzas 10 and 11 return to the natural world and the “gladness of the May,” but in them the reader can see
that Wordsworth has been changed by his meditation. He acknowledges that “nothing can bring back the
hour/ Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower” which belongs to the young only. Yet he suggests
stoically that “We will grieve not, rather find/ Strength in what remains behind.” Wordsworth finally salutes
the power of the human heart, “its tenderness, its joys, and fears,” and the poem ends not with the giddy and
transient happiness of stanza 3 but with a mature, chastened poet accepting both the pleasures and the pains of
Ode: Intimations of Immortality 1
“man’s mortality.”
Forms and Devices
Although, in some senses, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” is an extremely abstract, difficult poem,
Wordsworth does aid the reader by providing visual images for his philosophical ideas. Figurative language
functions in the same way as a parable in the Bible: Concrete images help the reader see the point.
The fifth stanza, which begins the highly abstract and philosophical section of the poem, presents three
metaphors that are repeated in later stanzas: God “is our home,” heaven is filled with light, and as an
individual grows up “shades of the prison-house begin to close” upon the child. The celestial light, which
represents the spiritual realm, eventually fades and dies away as the “Youth…farther from the east/ Must
travel.” Literally, the youth, as he grows older, does not travel westward or move into a shady prison-house;
Wordsworth uses metaphorical language to help the reader see the change from the liberty of pure spirituality
to the gradual imprisonment by matter or the flesh.
In stanzas 6 and 7, Wordsworth adds to the philosophical picture. Nature, or the material world, “with
something of a Mother’s mind,” makes “her foster child, her Inmate Man/ Forget…that imperial palace
whence he came.” Nature is figuratively represented as a foster mother, in opposition to God as the true
father. The “imperial palace,” or celestial home, is gradually forgotten by the “Inmate Man,” who is
Everyman, as he grows accustomed to the “prison-house” of earth.
Another attempt is made in stanza 8 to explain, through figurative language, the journey of the soul. The
“heaven-born freedom” that is the infant’s birthright becomes, in time, the “inevitable yoke” of mortal life,
an “earthly freight,” or “a weight,/ Heavy as frost.”
This poem does not offer a sustained conceit or extended metaphor but moves somewhat quickly from one
image to the next. The relationship between the foster mother and God the Father is pursued for two stanzas
and then dropped. The image of the youth moving from east to west appears only once. The contrast between
the “prison-house” that holds the “Inmate Man” and the “imperial palace” that lodges the soul, although it is
central to the poem, is stated explicitly in only three lines. The home of the soul becomes the “immortal sea”
in stanza 9, and what was formerly described as westward movement or a prison-house is visualized as
distance from the sea: “Though inland far we be,/ Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea/ Which brought
us hither.” One of the joys of the poem lies in this constant shifting as the poet, in a meditative mode, tries to
approximate in physical terms the complexity of his philosophy. With its rhythmical irregularities and stanza
variations, the ode is particularly well suited to this discursive, expansive style.
Themes and Meanings
Between the third and the ninth stanza, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” seems extremely bleak.
Wordsworth suggests that human growth leads downward from the splendor of youth to the emptiness and
grief of “palsied Age.” He accepts Plato’s notion that souls exist before as well as after they are joined with
bodies. Unlike Plato, however, Wordsworth believes that little children and infants inhabit a world which is
full of “visionary gleam” because they have only recently left the “imperial palace” in the spiritual realm
and, “trailing clouds of glory,” have entered the fallen world of matter. In childhood, according to
Wordsworth, one’s own immortality is intuited and so young people are perpetually joyful; they have a
“heart of May” not because their bodies are strong and capable but because of their spiritual health. The
bleakness comes when the “years…bring the inevitable yoke” of customary actions and “endless imitation.”
When the “celestial light,/ The glory and the freshness” of youth disappear, what is left?
The Poem 2
The final three stanzas answer this question in a hopeful fashion. Memory serves as an important key for a
kind of hard-earned happiness, “all that is at enmity with joy” cannot “utterly abolish or destroy” as long as
one can recall the “delight and liberty” of childhood when God’s light was all around. As the title explicitly
states, in maturity, one garners “intimations of immortality from recollections of early childhood.”
Wordsworth finds strength not only in memory but also in “the philosophic mind” that develops over time. In
his poem “Lines: Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” he claims that he need not mourn the loss
of youth because he has received “abundant recompense” in his more mature vision of the world and his
appreciation of the “still, sad music of humanity.” The same idea is reshaped in “Ode: Intimations of
Immortality.” Speaking for all of humanity, Wordsworth admits that “nothing can bring back the hour/ Of
splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower,” but he insists that “We will grieve not, rather find/ Strength in
what remains behind.” What remains are not only those memories of early childhood but also the “primal
sympathy…the soothing thoughts that spring/ Out of human suffering.” Wordsworth powerfully suggests that
it is sensitivity to others’ suffering and compassion that distinguish the mature person from the youthful one
and that provide a “recompense” for falling into the “prison-house” of consciousness. He finally suggests
that the mature mind develops, over time, a “faith that looks through death.”
The poet is able to conclude, in stanza 11, that he loves the “Brooks which down their channels fret,/ Even
more than when I tripped lightly as they.” There is a sense of reconciliation in these final lines; time is no
longer the enemy because Wordsworth recognizes that the “philosophic mind” can develop only as one
moves toward death. He loves nature even more than in youth because he has earned a sober appreciation of
the human heart, “its tenderness, its joys, and fears.” The false, transient euphoria of stanzas 3 and 4 is gone.
Instead, the poem ends with a powerful, if somewhat muted, joy. Through suffering, a “philosophic mind”
develops which allows one to endure and keep “watch o’er man’s mortality.”
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