Explain the fifth stanza in Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality."

In stanza five of Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," "the narrator explains how humans start in an ideal world that slowly fades into a shadowy life..."

The poet introduces his idea that we dwell in heaven before we are born and joined with our bodies; as infants, we retain a strong sense or memory of what heaven is like.

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

However, as a "growing boy..."

Shades of the prison-house begin to close...

But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy...

As the young boy begins to grown, the "prison house," a disconnection between our souls prior to birth, which has remained in infancy, is beginning to fade—though the young boy is still just close enough to heaven to see the light, know where it is coming from, and find joy in the world. Wordsworth infers that the young boy is approaching a precipice, almost ready to move into unknown and dark territories, where heaven's light will be no longer visible, and will be forgotten.

In childhood, according to Wordsworth, one’s own immortality is intuited and so young people are perpetually joyful; they have a “heart of May” not because their bodies are strong and capable but because of their spiritual health.

Wordsworth makes his argument that what makes young people capable is not their physical health, but their spiritual well-being: close at hand because they are still young and still connected to the source of their soul's initial joy: heaven.

The youth moves even farther from heaven, closer to the "precipice," but still a glimmer of heaven remains on the fringes of his awareness: though he is growing up and growing away from "spiritual health," he is "still Nature's priest." As a early Romantic poet, one of the elements in life Wordsworth felt was so important was one's connection to nature and the natural world.

As the youth becomes a Man, his connection to his "early form" is lost in the realities of the world: its obligations, work and trials. Nothing is left of that joyful sense that had earlier tied the Man to heaven as a baby. He loses hope as he plods along, continually without release, through each "common day."

Analyze the seventh stanza of "Ode: Intimations of Immortality".

Wordsworth's poem centers on the notion of maturation and how "the child is the father of the man."  The seventh stanza concerns the speaker, presumably Wordsworth, looking at a six year old child and envisioning the life they are going to lead:

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,     
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!     
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,     
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,     
With light upon him from his father's eyes!      90

A young six year old child is the focus of Wordsworth’s attention in this stanza.  He describes the child’s “bliss,” or youth.  The child is doted on and loved by mother and father.

See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,     
Some fragment from his dream of human life,     
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;

This child will follow the “predictable” course that most children fit into in order to be socially accepted (“some little plan or chart.”)  This force of conformity guides individual actions and while the boy might “shape” his destiny, the force of society and the need to assimilate is undeniable (“newly- learned art.”)   There is a “rush” for the child to grow up and become an adult and Wordsworth laments this leave of “bliss.”

A wedding or a festival,     
A mourning or a funeral;      95
And this hath now his heart,     
And unto this he frames his song:     
Then will he fit his tongue     
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;     

The child, playing an adult, will tend to the socially accepted responsibilities of being an adult in going to prescribed functions.  In the desire to conform and be accepted by the social forces of his day, he will guide his actions accordingly (“Then he will fit his tongue/ To dialogues of business, love, or strife.”)  Indeed, the child has assumed all “adult” responsibilities, and as he has grown up, he has become part of the social setting, losing his individuality.

But it will not be long     100
Ere this be thrown aside,     
And with new joy and pride     
The little actor cons another part;     
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'     
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,     105
That Life brings with her in her equipage;     
As if his whole vocation     
Were endless imitation.

Just as the child has pretended, adults who gear their actions to social acceptance, pretend as well (“As if his whole vocation/ Were endless limitation.”)   What the child pretends to be will actually become and in doing so will lose the uniqueness of childhood, purity, and innocence.