Ode : Imitations of immorality from recollections of early Childhood - Wiliam Wordsworth

Question 1

How is the theme of the Soul’s immortality presented in the poem?

Answer 1

-Speaker believes that the soul is everlasting > soul comes from heaven
-Children’s perception of the world is evidence of the soul’s immortality
-Soul > own joyful existence in heaven in heaven before coming to earth
-Ageing = harder to connect to the eternal
-Life = process of moving away from heavenly souls
-In death = soul is cleansed and pure

Question 2

How is the theme of Growing Up presented in the poem?

Answer 2

-Speaker > remembers the beauty and wonder of nature from his childhood.
-Believes that Children see the world differently > should recently arrived from heaven
-Ageing > Lose ability to see spiritual beauty
-speaker acknowledges the pain of losing the “visionary gleam’

Question 3

What question does Wordsworth explore in the poem?

Answer 3

-Why does our beautiful childhood vision disappear?

Question 4

What is the setting of the poem?

Answer 4

-Spring in the English countryside
-Nature as the mirror of heaven itself
-memories of seeing divine light in nature > remind the speaker of his deep-down faith
-Human souls come from and return to a beautiful eternity with God, who is our home.

Question 5

What belief does the Ode reflect?

Answer 5

Pantheism

Question 6

Why is Pantheism explored in the prom?

Answer 6

Popular in the 1800s as an alternative to organised religion

Question 7

How does Wordsworth begin the poem?

Answer 7

-Reflection of his childhood

Question 8

What does “appareled in celestial light” explore?

Answer 8

-nature to be dressed up in a glow that came from heaven itself

Question 9

Why is “glory” repeated throughout the poem?

Answer 9

-To show not just that the world once seemed to shine with light for the speaker, but there was always something magnificent, awe-inspiring and holy about that light

Question 10

what does the sudden shift to “The things which I gave seen now I now can see no more” suggest?

Answer 10

-Things have changed as he as aged
-the “glory” is gone
-Things he once saw he can no longer
-Heart-breaking loss is the dilemma at the centre of the poem

Question 11

What is significant about the change of meter to iambic hexameter in line 18?

Answer 11

-Change to a longer line suggests that no matter how much beauty the speaker can still see in the world, the missing ‘glory’ is really what is taking up space in his mind and heart

Question 12

Why does WW personify the moon?

Answer 12

-Speaker as united with the moon
-mankind and nature intertwined with the eternal

Question 13

What is significant about “ shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd boy!”?

Answer 13

-A direct apostrophe to a shepherd boy
-the speaker encourages him to become involved in the shared joy of the world around him

Question 14

What do the three consecutive rhymes in line 51-53 evoke in the poem?

Answer 14

-Evokes how insistent and elusive his memories feel
-call a lot of attention to themselves > just as the tree and field call to the speaker
-“one” is a slant rhyme with ‘upon” and “gone” > not a perfect rhyme
-The slight difference speaks to the difference the speaker feels as he looks on that tree and that field noe

Question 15

What is significant about “Whither is fled the visionary gleam?” Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”?

Answer 15

-Aporia
-Takes speaker back to the longing he reflected on at the beginning of the poem > The beauty of the spring just can’t tear him away from wondering where his inspired childhood vision disappeared to

Question 16

What do the elongated vowel sounds in `‘trailing clouds of glory” in line 64 create?

Answer 16

-shows the leap into this transcendent vision

Question 17

Why does WW describe that “heaven lies about us in our infancy!”?

Answer 17

-Children see more beautifully than adults do
-Children don’t just see the world as shining and beautiful because they are new to it > actually see it through the remembered light of heaven > “glory” of their vision is a souvenir from heaven

Question 18

What does the metaphor “Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy” in line 67 explore?

Answer 18

-The longer a person lives the longer it follows the shadowy “prison” of routine and habit > blocks out the “glory”
-Sense of guilt in the metaphor > Growing up as a crime against heavenly truth
-general terms of ‘boy” suggest that everyone commits this crime whether they want to or not

Question 19

What connotations does “inmate” in line 83 have?

Answer 19

-prisoner
-link to metaphorical prison house of the previous stanza

Question 20

What does the simile “Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life” in line 129 explore?

Answer 20

-Adulthood will descend on children like a crushing metaphorical weight
-“frost” contrasts with the newborn ‘may” > frost accumulates after birth > the years that pass have a chilling deadening effect > time as merciless

Question 21

What is significant about the sharp change in the speakers tone in line 130?

Answer 21

-Joy comes from the thought ad that even though everyone loses their divine vision as they grow, they can still remember it.
-Imagines the adult soul through the metaphor of “embers” of childhoods glorious fire : there is still that glow inside even if the fire has died down

Question 22

What is significant about the poems ending?

Answer 22

-ends on the word “tears” > tears of sorrow and joy at once
-To live a full human life this poem suggests is to live in a Paradox
-See the divine in the ordinary - gain in loss - the universal in the personal - the eternal in the transient, and the glory in the clouds.

Question 23

What is the form of the poem?

Answer 23

• eleven stanzas, all with varied rhyme schemes, patterns of meter, and lengths
  -free-form shape here thus helps the poem to feel like a record of developing thoughts
  -wrote the first 4 stanzas in 1804 and the last 7 over time until 1804 > his poem’s thoughtful, evolving shape reflects how seriously Wordsworth took the questions he’s asking here—and how profoundly he loved the complex beauties this ode praises.

Question 24

What is the meter of the poem?

Answer 24

-Moving from long lines to short lines, iambs to trochees, trimeter to hexameter > wide variation in the poem’s rhythms helps readers to feel and think right alongside the speaker.
-Shifts in meter reflect meaning in this way all through the poem, helping the reader to sense the speaker’s emotions through his pace and his rhythms.

Question 25

What is the rhyme scheme of the poem?

Answer 25

-Wordsworth uses different rhyme schemes in every stanza
-ABABA section, he’s describing how the world looked to him in childhood, when all of nature seemed to shine with “celestial light.”
- The new C rhyme enters, and so does a new idea: that the speaker can’t see things this way any more, now that he’s grown up.
CDDC rhymes evoke what he’s doing >he can’t rediscover the beauty he used to see.
-ABBACDCD > mirrors the first stanza > while the speaker has lost his childhood vision > found a new way to feel the world’s beauty > harmonious, just different.