William Wordsworth Group
Question:
ranawy
Student
College - Junior
Analyze the second stanza of William Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of Immortality."
Answers:
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lit24 Teacher
DoctorateeNotes Editor
Posted by lit24 on Monday May 18, 2009 at 6:57 AMIn the second stanza the speaker, who is usually identified with Wordsworth himself, says that even though he can still see the rainbow, the rose, the moon, and the sun, (all of which symbolize life sustaining Nature) and even though they are still beautiful, something is different, something has been lost:
"But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth."The reason why the speaker experiences this negative change becomes evident in the fifth stanza which contains arguably the most famous line of the poem: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting." He goes on to say that as infants we have some memory of heaven:"Heaven lies about us in our infancy!" and when we are still small children this connection with heaven causes us to experience nature's glory more clearly and keenly but as we grow up we lose that connection and once we mature into adulthood the connection is lost completely and permanently;consequently we are no longer able to find and experience the same joy and delight which we once experienced when we were small children:
"At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."Sources:
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