Here is one of romantic poetry’s masterpieces: “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections Of Early Childhood”, by William Wordsworth. Through this poem he offers to us some insight into the nature of our inevitable growth as individual human beings. Not only are we forced to grow physically, but we cannot help but grow spiritually as well and this change inherently affects our relationship with the natural world and the kind of knowledge and pleasure that we have access to.

As we grow old, should we ponder those past days in quiet nostalgia, with implied regret? Or perhaps we should simply be grateful for those past experiences? Is it possible that such gratefulness can only be experienced once we recognize the gifts that time has granted us? There are so many ways for us to see our past, our present and their relationship: for some, it all leads to regret; for others, the fruits that our past has granted us are ignored. Wordsworth’s “Ode” tells us that it is possible to appreciate the unique beauty of a child’s perspective all while recognizing the value of human growth in forming our perspective on nature.

Through his poetry, he explored these matters for himself and shared with us the path through which his emotions progressed. It was not a linear path without impediments, but it lead him to accept the processes of aging, even death, and form a greater understanding of nature and our relationship with her.

[Note that I have inserted the poem at the very end of this post]

He begins by contemplating a time when all that he saw was fresh, beautiful and glorious, only to pull himself back to a reality that is shadowed by the fact that “the things which I have seen / I now can see no more.” The past is but the past and these memories of childhood do not offer possibilities, but only the knowledge that there were experiences which he loved and which are no longer accessible to him.

Then, in his second stanza, he recognizes that all that he saw then still exists, that still “The Rainbow comes and goes” and still “The sunshine is a glorious birth”. What he has lost is not a beautiful world, but the capacity to appreciate it as he once did.

In his third stanza, “while the birds thus sing a joyous song”, there comes a moment when “To me alone there came a thought of grief”, but this thought is but a passing cloud, for soon after he regains his strength and is invigorated by the nature that surrounds him. He declares: “And I again am strong / […] / And all the earth is gay”.

His fourth stanza begins with overwhelming optimism, where he tells all the “blessed Creatures” that “My heart is at your festival / My head hath its coronal / The fullness of you bliss, I feel—I feel it all”. But the stanza does not conclude on such a joyous note, for he sees a Tree and a Field that remind him “of something that is gone”. Perhaps he is reminded of the Tree of Life and the Garden of Eden, of the immortality and idyllic existence from which humanity has been banned. He looks down at his feet and sees a Pansy, but still, something has changed. The stanza ends, troubled by his questions: “Whither is fled the visionary gleam? / Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”. He realises that he has lost something – Heaven — and that there is no point in pretending otherwise.

His gloom reaches its height in his fifth stanza, where he tells us that “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting”. Our souls, taken away from Heaven, are put to sleep into this world, until our death, and, as we grow old in this meaningless world, “Shades of the prison-house begin to close / Upon the growing Boy”. As we age, the memory of Heaven fades away into nothingness and our ties with it are ultimately severed, leaving us with no more than a prison in which we can no longer project the beauty of the Heavens.

In his sixth stanza, he speaks of the Earth as a maternal figure with something of a duty: she tries to make us forget about the glorious past we experienced in Heaven, with our Father; and to this end she offers us some worldly pleasures in an attempt to give meaning to our mortal lives.

But can these gifts compensate us for the loss of Heaven? In his seventh stanza, Wordsworth describes to us the best kind of life that we can experience, from the time when a boy is “Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses”, to “A wedding or a festival / a mourning or a funeral”, “to dialogues of business, love, or strife”. But he describes it as a trivial affair, because it is “as if his whole vocation / Were endless imitation”. Life is seen as no more than a hopeless attempt at recreating that which we have lost.

In his eight stanza, he speaks of the boy a Philosopher, a Prophet, as an “Eye among the blind” who is home to truths “Which we are toiling all our lives to find”; he then asks him “Why with such earnest pains dost though provoke / The years to bring the inevitable yoke, / Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?” In other words: he wonders why the boy seems so eager to reach the worldly glories of adult life. Is he blind to the heavenly access that he still has? Does he ignore that time will weight him down, that the shades of the prison-house will close, forcing him to abandon this insight which he still possesses?

In his ninth stanza, Wordsworth leaps up and tells us that, in contrast to his previous impressions, his thoughts of past years do not inspire sorrow or anything of the like, but a feeling “perpetual benediction”. As for those “obstinate questionings” about that which we have lost, they are but “Blank misgivings of a creature / Moving about in worlds not realised”. Our memories of childhood “Uphold us, cherish and have the power to make / Our noisy years seem moments in the being”. And if we need to experience this feeling of immortality more directly – and indeed, we need to –, then we can rejoice, because our souls still maintain this link and we can, in but a moment, have access to that perspective that guided us as children.

These thoughts, alone, do not justify the process of aging; they only tell us that we can still eat from the fruits of childhood, if not be completely and utterly immersed in their rewards. It is in his tenth stanza that he tells us about that which time and suffering grants us and that which we can obtain through no other process: “the philosophic mind”.

He goes on, in his eleventh and final stanza, to tell us that the only pleasure which he has lost is that which comes from being continuously touched by nature’s influence: “I only have relinquished one delight / To live beneath your more habitual sway”. In return, however, he has gained the ability to distance himself from nature and contemplate it with the philosophic mind that age has granted him, allowing him form an even greater appreciation of that which surrounds him.

As for the promise of death — “The Clouds that gather round the setting sun” — it forces him to look at life in a more realistic manner, something that is, at the very least, necessary to guide us as mortal creatures. He concludes the poem by noting how grateful he is for his heart’s condition, because it allows him to see depth in the smallest of things; and this is the kind of depth that can only be appreciated with the gifts that time grants us.

We have long been challenged with doubts about aging and death and tempted by regret and its idealisation of the past. What point is there in it all? Wordsworth answers this by finding value in the changes we experience in our relationship with nature. As children, we are more sensible to the gifts of nature, allowing sensations to infect us in a whole and pure manner. While as adults, though we grow more dull in some respects, though we are easily distracted by the mundane affairs of this human world, we can appreciate these gifts in a less superficial manner by contemplating questions that no child can pose; Wordsworth’s poem is, in itself, a testament to this fact, as no child could produce such a thing.

This tells us about what we lose and what we gain in return, but why would one not come with the other? In his tenth stanza, Wordsworth explains  that, with the aid of past experiences and through the challenges of suffering, the philosophic mind is formed. After all, how can we take the time to look at the world with any amount of depth when nature bathes us in constant pleasures, when all our needs are fulfilled and satisfaction comes with ease? The ability to be amazed by the shimmering of a rainbow, the rush of waterfalls and the singing of birds is an important step, but at one point we must move forward – we must age – and seek more complex things to brings joy to our souls. This is where art, spirituality, science and philosophy come in; and these are the fruits of age, fruits that can only be brought to us under the threat of boredom and the threat of death.

If we are to push things a bit further and link them to theology: it would seem that to Wordsworth, our existence begins in Heaven (4. 52-58; 8. 123), where we live as immortal creatures under the protection of the Tree of Life (4. 51). But, just as Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden after eating from the Tree of Knowledge, we are cast into this world where we cannot help but lose the purity and innocence that once existed within our souls (5. 58). As children, we are still influenced by our experience in Heaven (5. 66) and we let shine its beauty onto the world, enhancing our love of nature. But as we age, our memory of Heaven and our sense of immortality fade away, and we suffer (5. 67). It is then that, through our suffering (10. 184), the philosophic mind is developed within us, granting us with a new perspective on life (11. 187). We start to see things that we could have never seen under the protection of the Tree of Life and the feelings of immortality that it granted us (11. 193-194), feelings that still affect us once we are cut off from Heaven and sent to this Earth (5. 65-67). Instead of the Tree of Life, we are guided by the Tree of Knowledge, by philosophy and the suffering that comes with it; and it is that very suffering which, in the end, allows us to see the natural world with a new splendour, with greater depth (11. 201-204).

At the very least, what is clear is that, through the emotional journey he describes in his “Ode”, he comes to see his childhood perspective in a less idealised manner: it is beautiful, it is innocent, but it is not everything. In adulthood, after having grown somewhat disconnected from nature in contrast to a child’s relationship with it, he recognises that not only does he still have access to nature if only he tries to connect with it, but he also has access to a certain beauty that no child can see; that is, the beauty that comes with the philosophic mind, the thoughts that arise in our suffering and the faith we must muster after having accepted our mortality.

-Dussault

I

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.

II

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.

III

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!

IV

Ye blessed 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.
Oh 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?

V

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.

VI

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.

VII

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-learned 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.

VIII

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;
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!

IX

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 realised,
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!
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.

X

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.

XI

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.

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