INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD
This text is an ode. The ode is a particular type of poetry characterized by a complex lay-out, a complex, lyrical and dignifite language. It differs from the ballad and from the sonet.
Poet is like a child who keeps emotional experience from God. The child is sensitive to all natural influences. The younger he is the better he perceives the "divine light". He grows up in a countryside not in a city: in a town a person becomes incapable of perceiving the radiance of nature .
The speaking voice is remembering a past moment in life where he's in a meadow (Prato), grove (Bosco) and on stream (ruscello). He was young: relationship with nature is spontaneous. His world view is different from that of an adult.
ANALYSIS ( NOT YET COMPLETED)
Denotation: main content
The main concept is that: the birth is said to be asleep, something which is losely forgotten. The soul is seen like a star. It comes from a different place, it had a different setting.
Men come directly from God. When men are children, heaven is with them.
But when begin to grow shaves like those in a prison begin to move around them. Gradually men lose the divine qualities coming from God.
Connotation:
It is difficult to make an analysis of the different level of connotation since this is only on extract from the ode.
The rhyme scheme is generally in alternated rhyme. The musicality of the ode affects the reader with its sonorals rhythm. Alliteration contribute to the effect. In language, alliteration refers to repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of a series of words and/or phrases.
Alliterationts in the text:
-From God, who is our home.--> repetition of "h" sound

-the, that, with, hath had, cometh--->repetition of "th" sound

-time, meadow, stream, common--->repetition of "m" sound

Emphatic use of rhythm. Syntax is more complicated than the one in the poem we have read so far. Also accumulative affects create emphasis. Choice of words is not that simple. The language is more poeticle than every day language. Divinity in nature requires such language.
The extract presents a climated effect which comes from:
-soul
-boy
-God
-Nature priest
-men
-Nature youth
Rethorical devices
Metaphores are imployed: our birth is a sleep / the soul...our life star / our birth is a forgettin / God is our home / shades of the prison house / the youth...nature priest.
The fabric of the poem is remember to perception giving way to reflection.

The main factor of a child awareness ( consapevolezza-deriva da to be aware ) gives way to the more sobre vision of the man; mediated by love the child perceptions in a strange world take on a meaning, as he grows up, finally emerg as the recognition of profound human significant in nature. The poet is aware of a loss of vividness in his appreciation of nature. He explains the loss by supposing that there was a time, prior to his birth, when his soul was attuned to ( da to be attuned to= essere accordato) God and in harmony with nature, the child has luckily loses this close contact as he grows old and loses also the vividness of his response to nature.
Nevertheless, although adults lack ( mancare ) the perceptiveness of children, they do not entirely forget what they owns knew. The state of childhood is nearest to God because the child has not progressed far from God " who is our home" is his journey through life.
It follows that childhood is the best part of the men's life: it is the most innocent, and also the most illuminated by the glory that the child brings with him.
That vision gives him a wisdom that he gradually loses, as he progresses into adult life. It is wisdom that is insensitive that may scene naturally intune with nature.