Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of early Childhood

Analysis

It is difficult to make an analysis of the different levels of connotation since this is only an extract from the ode.

The rhyme scheme is generally in alternate rhyme (ABAB) in order to make a sonorous rhythm and to affect the reader attention. The musicality effect is also underlines by alliterations: the “l” sound in the words “apparel”, “celestial” and “light”; the “s” sound in the words “soul”, “rises”, “Star”; the “f” sound in “forgetting” and “life”. Another sound devices is the repetition of vowels sound ( meadow, grove, stream, earth, dream…) in order to create an echo effect, maybe because the writer wants to confer to the scene an open space effect (heaven could be infinite).

Syntax is more complicated than the one in the poem we have read so far, in fact in the first three lines the  words “to me” are in a strong position in order to focus the attention on the poet’s perception of Nature. 

Subjects, verbs and complements are in different order than other poems because an ode in more complex kind of poetry.

Choice of words is not that simple, for example the poet uses archaic words like “yore”, also the language is more poetical then the everyday language because it is influenced by the type of the text that the poet has chose, the ode.  Another reason for choosing this language is that divinity in Nature requires such language. The extract presents a climatic effect which came from:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->-          <!--[endif]-->Soul

<!--[if !supportLists]-->-          <!--[endif]-->God

<!--[if !supportLists]-->-          <!--[endif]-->Youth

<!--[if !supportLists]-->-          <!--[endif]-->Nature’s youth

<!--[if !supportLists]-->-          <!--[endif]-->Nature’s priest

<!--[if !supportLists]-->-          <!--[endif]-->Man

About rhetorical devices the poets uses lots of metaphors “our birth is but a sleep and forgetting”, “the soul…our life’s star”, “God is our home”, “shades  of the prison-house begin to close”, “the youth… nature priest”.

They are all connected to the relationship between people’s life, from birth to adult age, and God .