For Monday: English Romantic Poetry: William Wordsworth
“Ode: Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections in Early Childhood” (pp.51-57): read the entire poem, but the
questions will only focus on Stanzas 1-7
NOTE: This is a longer poem, though it’s broken up into short stanza chapters. Read it slowly, and focus on each stanza as
an individual poem. Then consider how
each one develops a general ‘story’ or narrative about Wordsworth’s life. Consider this, too, as a kind of mid-life
crisis poem: Wordsworth feels himself pulling away from the innocent joys he
used to experience in life, and the poem is an attempt to find himself—and to
convince other readers to find themselves in the thickets of adulthood.
Answer 2 of the 4 questions below:
1. According to Stanzas 1-4, what causes the poet to feel distanced
from the natural world? What has come
between him and his imagination/emotions?
In Stanza 2 he writes that “But yet I know, where’er I go,/That there hath
past away a glory from the earth.” What
is this “glory” that has passed away?
Can we hint at what he feels or sees that is missing?
2. Read Stanza 5 carefully: how are the metaphors trying to explain the
nature of life on earth? Why is birth “a
sleep and a forgetting”? Why do “shades
of the prison-house begin to close/Upon the growing Boy”? And why might a young boy/girl be “Nature’s
Priest”?
3. In Stanza 6, Wordsworth uses the metaphor of Nature as a Nurse, and
the Youth being her “Foster-child.” In
what way are we to understand Nature as nursing a child that is not her own,
but which she loves “with something of a Mother’s mind”?
4. Stanza 7 is one of the most important in the entire poem for
explaining a very Romantic philosophy of adulthood. What does he mean by the phrase “The little
Actor cons another part…As if his whole vocation/Were endless imitation.” How might this be another way of stating
Shakespeare’s famous line from As You
Like It that “All the world’s a stage”?
Cera Miller
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1
- I think it is life and all of its experiences (good and bad) that have taken the joy out of seeing the natural wonders of the world. As a child everything is shiny and new, and as an adult, life is full of strife and not everything is as wonderful as you once thought. You can become jaded to the pain and the beauty equally. The “glory” that passed away was the wonder and joy at simple, everyday things, and the awe of what is magnificent in this universe.
Question 2
- I believe what Wordsworth is saying is that when a person is born, they are the purist that they will be until they reach Heaven, upon being born though, we start to lose yourselves to the trials of life. The “prison” is all the bad things in life that can take away your hope, happiness, faith, and self. As a child we are full of these things, but the adults and experiences growing up beat them out of us. Young children are still “Nature’s Priest” since they still the wonders it has to offer.
Great ideas here: once routine sets in, the glory becomes faded, the unusual becomes usual. The adult forgets to see the world as a reflection of the divine, and sees it as simply rocks, trees, clouds, etc. We become obsessed with our role in life, and that becomes everything--though it is an act, something learned, and not the essence of who we truly are. Wordsworth is trying to find a way to reconcile the inevitable process of forgetting with the power of understanding loss, which only an adult can truly understand. Through loss an adult can find his/her way back, and recover the magic of Nature. And Nature, coincidentally, is full of reminders of this loss--in every tree and flower.
DeleteSrijita Ghosh
ReplyDelete1. The poet feels that he is no more amazed or excited about the small things in life ; in nature. Multiple rainbows come and go,the lovely roses lie before him and the moon looks as beautiful as ever, but something in him has disappeared because of which he cannot see and rejoice these wonderful things anymore. And he can himself realises this fact and is getting scared by the change taking place in him. He is growing up, and in the process of this transition from childhood to adulthood, he is losing the ability to value nature and enjoy the small things happening all around him. The responsibilities, rules and boundaries of the world have began to accumulate on his shoulders, and these are the things that are distancing him from the natural world.
3. There is a popular saying that nature is the Mother of all. Thus every being is a child of mother nature. I believe that the poet here is trying to imply that Nature acts as a mother to the youth, the youth being her foster child but whom she loves and cares for as a real mother. Because in real the youth is the child of some human but on a broader view, nature too plays an important role in bringing up the child and moulding their personality. She helps the youth to grow into an adult by teaching him/her all the lessons required to survive, through the natural ways. She does all she can to make her foster child her inmate, a part of her family ; a part of the natural world. The youth forgets his previous life, from where he came from or who he was and begins to explore his present world and with an open mind takes in all that nature has to give to him.
Great responses--weighed down with responsibilities, we forget to look at life and recover the simple joy of being at one with our surroundings. We see ourselves as apart from life, and we experience Nature at a remove--from behind a fence, or now, through a car window. But the child never felt this separation, any more than the little girl felt that her dead siblings were truly gone. So the question is, how can an adult recapture this perspective without literally becoming a child again?
Delete1.
ReplyDeleteIn the first stanza, the speaker views nature as if in a dream. By the time the speaker gets to the second stanza, he accepts the fact that the rainbows, roses, and moon are indeed all beautiful, but something about this beauty is different. He is beginning to lose touch with the simplistic beauty of nature. The quote “That there hath past away a glory from earth”, expresses the fact that he is saddened by this beauty and is feeling guilty because he is not feeling the beauty of nature anymore.
2.
Wordsworth expresses his view that the human soul exists first in heaven. And because of this, children know more than an adult about this supernatural world. Adults are more mature, educated, experienced and very narrow minded therefore suggesting that they know less about God, heaven and hell. This is what I believe the metaphors are suggesting. Wordsworth paints us a picture about a “prison-house”, but he doesn’t mean a literal prison. In actuality he wants to convey his view and message that imagination dies when a child grows up.
Sammie Smith
Darryn York
DeleteI think the author was trying to get across that mother nature raises kids in a sense. The average loves being outdoors and spends most of their free time playing in the outdoors. Unless were raised to be forced to stay inside, if you think about it mother nature breads everyone and played a big role in everyone's live.
“A sleep and a forgetting" the author was referring to heaven. Children have a more retained image and memory from heaven in a sense because they were there more recent than adults. As the child grows up the images and memory is forgotten
Whoops--Darryn responses to Sammie's response, so I can't respond to her individually. So I'll do both below:
DeleteSammie: Great responses--I think it's important that you point out his experience of sadness. He claims that he can't feel anything anymore, but he does; he feels this incredible loss of Nature. The loss of adulthood is how he finds his way back to a sense of oneness with nature. Ultimately, he realizes that a child can see more, but an adult can understand more through his/her sense of pain and loss.
Darryn: Yes, to Wordsworth and many Romantics, Nature was more than a place to play, it was a physical force, a mirror of one's soul. When you look into Nature, you really don't see the same place someone else does, just as we all see different patterns in the clouds. It reflects your own ideas, sensibility, and dreams. So if we stop looking at Nature and see it as a mere window to look out of, we lose all sense of ourselves. It's the only way to truly see who we are beyond the mask that we wear in society.
Amira Jacobson
ReplyDelete1. I believe he feels that way because there was a time when all of nature seemed dreamlike to him, “appareled in celestial light,” and that time is past; “the things I have seen I can see no more.” In the second stanza he is describing nature and its timeless beauty but I think what he is getting at when he says “that there hath past away a glory from the earth,’’ is the feeling of excitement and adventure he got when he saw as a child.
3. In Stanza 6 Wordsworth uses the metaphor “to make her Foster-child,” to symbolize “nature” as a second mother to the child. Nature is providing everything the child needs to be happy; food, water, shelter and fun, all these elements rolled into one help sculpt the child’s personality and makes make him/her a better person. For example, I used to live in the city but when my dad met my step mom, we moved out to the country where my new grandma had a ranch. Being outside around the animals, working hard and then playing with my new siblings every day, helped me become the person I am today. If we hadn’t have moved I would be a completely different person. Nature plays a very important role in a child’s life which is why I think Wordsworth is personifying nature as a second mother.
Great response here, especially as you connect this with your personal experience. In many ways, Wordsworth conflates adulthood with being in the city, since more and more adults were being driven out of the country to work in the cities (as this was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution). Work consumed everyone's days, making the small joys of existence obsolete. Yet Wordsworth felt that a child knows more about Truth than a man forced to work 12 hours a day in a factory. Children instinctively run free, but adults--then as now--willing enslave themselves to the masters of Duty and Society. Wordsworth felt--as Blake did--that society shouldn't be a machine where each person is a cog in the great machine; rather, each person is an undeniable part of the earth, which no amount of cities or factories can efface. Only our minds can erase our true heritage, by willingly forgetting who we are in favor of a stock role on a comic stage--Shakespeare's "all the world's a stage."
DeleteLeslie Foster
ReplyDelete2) The interesting thing about stanza V of this poem is that it almost has philosophy of reincarnation written in if one reads between the lines. Wordsworth uses the line “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting” to illustrate how, as we are born and grow into ourselves how we grow further apart from an animal, natural setting. Although “shades of the prison-house” fall upon the young boy as he ages and assumes the role of a growing child, he still seems to carry a light of wonder about him. “But he beholds the light, and whence it flows; he sees it in his joy…” That is to say, the young boy still is happy and takes pleasure in the simple things of life or the natural world. This joy can be seen radiating from the faces of young children, despite shadows cast by their surroundings. It is with this optimal joy that they may be “nature’s priest.”
4) In this last stanza Wordsworth wants to illustrate how, as we age and become adults, we take upon these seemingly fake constructs of societal norms as dictated by our culture; that in many ways are arbitrary when you give it some thought. Like Shakespeare’s “all the world’s a stage” he means that we take on roles or busy ourselves with duties that we are expected to fill in life. We pretend to be man, when man is but an extension of the natural world and not above animal instincts. “As if his whole vocation/Were endless imitation…” can read as the life of man is merely to imitate what he deems appropriate, an endless act to be something that we may not be.
Yes, great responses; if we run with the idea of reincarnation,. it suggests that we are not born a blank slate, nor do we completely start anew. Rather, we are the sum of our karmic experiences, though life makes us forget our past lives and simply be "us." In that sense, life is indeed a sleep and a forgetting, though Wordsworth also means that the child has wisdom the adult lacks. He/she can see glory undimmed by sorrow, the glory of being at one with Nature/God. The adult is hemmed in by darkness at all sides, so must find a way to reconcile loss with beauty. Can one still remember the glory of a child's vision while 'weeping' the tears of experience?
DeleteALBERTO LAPIEDRA
ReplyDeleteQ.1
As a child we can see the things, the experiences and most of the things like a positive thing, everything is new. When the child starts to grow we can see how the things change we have more things in our head, and the things are not that good.
Q.2
I think that Wordsworth says that when we are born we are more pure, when we are a child we are full of positive and good energy, but as soon as we start to grow up, the bad things like the prison can take away you hope, happiness, etc.
Yes, the adult can see much more than the child of this world, but the trade-off is that he/she forgets what he/she once knew. The glory of Nature and of the world beyond is lost in the "darkness" of life. However, Wordsworth also believes that only an adult who is aware of this loss can truly appreciate it; a Child never feels loss like this, since he/she is at one with Nature. Through loss is rediscovery, and a way to remember what was forgotten by the adult.
DeleteMika Hendrix
ReplyDeleteQ1. In stanzas 1-4 I believe his age is what is keeping him distanced. He no linger see's the world as this bright enchanting place. The glory that is missing is his innocence. He has grown and his imagination went with his innocence.
Q2) I believe he is trying to say that children were in heaven before they came to earth. When they came they had thus forgotten earth but yet were still pure and could see and know things the adults had long since forgotten could exist. Its almost like earth is the prison and we as people are here to forget all the beautiful happy things that can happen cause we are to busy growing up.
Good ideas here, but why do you think that age removes imagination? According to these stanzas (1-7), what pushes him away from childhood innocence into adult experience? Why does he "act" like someone else?
DeleteNathan Gilliam
ReplyDelete1. Wordworth is describing to us the all to familiar feeling of the loss of childhood innocence and the wonder that accompanys it. He describes it with beauty and is then brought down by a thought of grief, then he feels well again until the tree brings him back down. This roller coaster of emotions is very relatable to life in that we go through highs and lows of how we feel about ourselves and the world around us. Perhaps the reason the world no longer looks so inviting and exciting to him is in part due to the way he has grown to feel about himself, old and unentertaining.
2. In Stanza five we see hints of the description of life as it is growing up in a world of adults. I believe when he says "our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting" he is referring to reincarnation, that our souls have lived more lives, that we come in with some sort of preference, that we have learned but have now forgotten and begin a new. "Shades of the prison house begin to close upon the growing boy" is referrring to lifes shackles of rules. When your young there is no real rules, no perminant punishment, although it may seem like forever. then as we mature we begin to see the imposition of authority on our day to day lives and lose our sense of true and careless freedom that we once held as a youth.
Yes, this could mean reincarnation, or the sense that when we are born, we are a soul, not a blank slate. We have a life already, full of joy and connections which are gradually stripped away from us as we are seduced by the World. He wants us to move away from seeing this World as the center of all our existence and experience, and consider that life is a process of dreaming and forgetting, rather than of becoming and remembering.
DeleteDax Walker
ReplyDelete1.) The poet feel distanced from the world because he has grown up and lost the wonderment he had as a child. As he has gotten older he has forgotten all the things that were wonderful about the world he lived in or maybe its as he has gotten older he has seen more and he can no longer feel those feelings and emotions that he used to as a child. And I think the "glory" that he is missing is all the beautiful things that he used to see as a kid that are now lost.
4.) I think these lines make a lot of sense. Because when your a child you are your self essentially your not trying to imitate anyone your just living life and having fun. But as you grow older you are expected to "grow up" and mature and become apart of society. I also think that when you get older that you are constantly the little actor coning another part, because as you get older you act a certain to fit in and be accepted as a part of society and I think that's another way to interpret that.
Yes, great responses--he can still "see" the things that used to be glorious for him, but he no longer feels them the way he once did. So seeing for him is not just physically seeing, but being able to conjure up the "mirror" of himself that he once found in nature. Now, it no longer speaks to him beyond the fact that it's pretty, etc. It's become a window rather than a mirror, and no longer reflects himself.
Delete1. Wordsworth is had simply given up on the beauty in life. A rose is just a rose, it's no longer beautiful and amazing, but simply a rose. He's grown older, and lost his childlike innocence of seeing every for the first time, so even when he sees a rainbow, he's kind of just like look there goes another rainbow.
ReplyDelete4. Wordsworth is saying here that as we grow older, we tend to mirror others around, and do as they do, and say as they say. The world says get a job, and put away childish things. Video games, toys, and the like we are told to leave those things alone and "go be a man". We forget to just be ourselves, do what we want, and stop and smell the roses.
1. Wordsworth is had simply given up on the beauty in life. A rose is just a rose, it's no longer beautiful and amazing, but simply a rose. He's grown older, and lost his childlike innocence of seeing every for the first time, so even when he sees a rainbow, he's kind of just like look there goes another rainbow.
ReplyDelete4. Wordsworth is saying here that as we grow older, we tend to mirror others around, and do as they do, and say as they say. The world says get a job, and put away childish things. Video games, toys, and the like we are told to leave those things alone and "go be a man". We forget to just be ourselves, do what we want, and stop and smell the roses.
Darryn York
ReplyDeletefor stanza 9 Wordsworth talks about trying to remember old thoughts from the past.
ie: his childhood, how he enjoyed the little things, etc.
even though it was so long ago, he says "which be they what they may / are yet the fountain of light of all our day" so he sees the old thoughts and although it's not something that can be 100% remembered, it still can be the best thing to brighten the day in the sense of making it better. when he says a master light, it's like saying its the memory to always keep in the back of your mind to remember the good times.
so when he was a kid, he enjoyed nature and growing his responsibilities distanced him from it. by him just remembering his childhood and keeping the thoughts in his head reminds him of the better days.
ALBERTO LAPIEDRA
ReplyDelete1)By the pass of the time we can see how the poet fell distance from himself and the world, and he forget all the things that they were pretty. Besides, the glory that he missed are the good things that they are lost.
4) Especially when you are a child, you don’t have to be worried about anything, you are just living life. But as a human you are expected to grow and mature. Also when you grow up you get another roll on society that you have to adjust to it.