Intimation of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

An ode is a complex form of poetry : it is lyrical because it deals with close feelings , it has a dignified and complex language and also it is charged with metaphors. From the point of view of the layout it is more complex than a sonnet or a ballad. The object of an ode is a philosophical problem, as a matter of fact the writer is speaking of his life and how his response to nature changed during his life.

The extract is taken from an ode which is titled Intimation of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. In this ode Wordsworth wants to sums up the relationship between babies and Nature in contrast with the relationship between adults and Nature.

The writer has composed the ode according to the Neoplatonic vision of life. He believes that babies come straight into the world from the creator of Nature, God, therefore they have inside their soul the remembrance of the beauty of God’s Kingdom. The child is sensitive to all natural influence. But when babies grow up they loose their link with heaven. An adolescence and then an adult have a different perception of meadow, grove and stream, natural elements in general. The older became a person the further from God and from that sort of magic world percept from child. People and society are very distant from the lightness of childhood and in addition they are distance from the spontaneous relationship with Nature. According to Wordsworth the poet is like a child. He is able to keep the experiences of his close relationship with God. The poet uses lots of metaphor connect from God: light is a metaphor of heaven, heave is a metaphor for God, God is a metaphor for perfection.