For
Wednesday: English Romantic Poetry: William
Wordsworth
“Ode, Intimations of Immortality”: Stanzas 8-11
For Wednesday’s class, choose ONE of the
metaphorical lines below (taken from the poem) below, and explain how
Wordsworth uses it to translate his philosophical musings into a comparison we
can see, feel, and understand. Also, how
does this metaphor build on some aspect of the poem from previous stanzas (as
we discussed in class on Monday)?
Stanza 8:
a. “thou Eye among the blind,/That, deaf and
silent, read’st the eternal deep”
b. “Thou, over whom thy Immortality/Broods like the
Day, a Master o’er a Slave”
Stanza 9:
c. “Those shadowy recollections,/Which, be they what
they may,/Are yet the fountain light of all our day,/Are yet a master light of
all our seeing”
Stanza 10:
d. “Though nothing can bring back the hour/Of splendor
in the grass, of glory in the flower”
Stanza 11:
e. “To me the meanest flower that blows can
give/Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears”
Cera Miller
ReplyDeleted.
- I think what he is saying is that what is lost (childhood, innocence), is gone forever. We can never behold it again once it passes because time moves on, and you must go with it, even though you want to stay in that “hour”. He follows this line up with “We will grieve not, rather find / Strength in what remains behind” which is to say that while we can never get back what is lost (wither it be a loved one, a special time, or feeling), we will never forget it either because it is still a part of you; that it is still there, in our hearts, and that we can go back to it, for a moment. So while the “splendor in the grass” and “glory in the flower” are gone, you can still remember.
B.“Thou, over whom thy Immortality/Broods like the Day, a Master o’er a Slave” What this says to me is that we as people are always thinking about when we might die. So we live life almost in fear of death, always afraid of when it might come knocking. This particular metaphor hits home with me because many times you see a master standing over the slave relentlessly, said slave cannot concentrate and really do their job well because they are constantly worried about messing up, and being whipped.
ReplyDeleteIn this line of Wordsworths poem I believe he is trying to explain that no matter how wonderful something was in the past you cant go back to it. You can only take what you may have learned from it and use it later on in your life. The way he makes this seem real is comparing this happiness to things we experienced as children first hand. As young children the outdoors was our playground, we were surrounded by the growing grass and flowers. These things are beautiful and enchanting as children and reminds us of our happiness when we were young.
ReplyDeleteMadelyn Lehr
DeleteD
E
ReplyDeleteI believe the speaker is trying to show his love of nature and the world around him, and how this moves him in a way nothing else has before. This being said he is becoming aware that he is losing some of the beauty he used to get from nature and knows now he can only rely on what he remembers. Since he is transitioning out of childhood, and losing that beauty he is coming to realize that he must rely on prior knowledge alone, and memory to keep him sane. Nature is everything in his life, just like how soccer is (almost) everything in my life. My world revolves around my passion which happens to be soccer, just like Wordsworths passion is the beauty of nature. And because he is forgetting and having to recollect prior knowledge, of things we used to "know" and love, implies that the soul is forever living. Kind of like Phaedo's philosophy: the soul forgets or loses touch with Beauty and you need help to jog your memory. Recollection shows the soul exists before death. The soul is immortal. This is what i believe Wordsworth is trying to convey in this quote.
Sammie Smith
Dax Walker
ReplyDeleteD
In line D the poet is saying that even though he has grown older and that he will never be able to live free and imaginative like a child again not all hope is lost he can still find joy in life in the things that he loves. He continues one the next couple lines and say "we will not grieve, rather find strength in what is left behind." I think that is what he is trying to say in the stanza is that he is trying to find some light in this dull life.
Alex Fillat
ReplyDeleteD.
I understand that what he tries to say is that the things that he lost will never come again. Even if we would like to go to the past, it's not possible and you have to look forward. The think is that if something has been very important for you, you won't be able to go back to that time but it will never die if you can remember it.
B
ReplyDeleteI feel as if Wordsworth is saying that children think they are immortal so they don't value the day, therefore they think their days never end. Just as a slave, under their master, feels that his weary days will never end. This reiterates the main focus of the poem to convey how important the innocence of a child is.
Jacob Taylor