Learning Path » 5B Interacting

DPitton - The Ode
by DPitton - (2010-11-10)
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The complex title of the poem reminds the creative process of Romantic poetry which is also explained in Wordsworth's Preface to lyrical ballads. Therefore, the reader may expect a poem which is about a distant memory and develops a parallelism between the poet's past and a reality beyond time and space.
From a denotative point of view, the poem consists of several metaphors which describe the Divine nature of Life.
As regards the connotative analysis, several concealed elements are found throughout the whole text. In the first verse, for example, there are two words that set up a new perspective about life and death: "sleep" and "forgetting". Our usual life in fact is seen as a mere tiny remembrance of our divine and spiritual origin, therefore there's almost a reversal of death, which is seen as an actual awakening in our real condition (as lines 61 and 62 have this conception). Another important aspect, thoroughly linked to the first, is infancy, in which Man seems to have the last true picture about his previous nature (conversely, we don't remember our infancy because of this reason). Anyway, as verses 61 and 70 to 75 underline, humankind will always try to follow that little spark of Truth, which is destined to fade away until death.
Concerning structure, the ode is arranged in irregular verses, which underline the idea of confusion dwelling in us since birth. The lines ending with a colon can be read as the most important ones, explaining the main theme of the whole poem.