Theme of Loss and Gain in 'Immortality Ode':
The poem Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood commences with a note of regret that the heavenly or celestial spark that the poet found in his childhood days in all the phenomena of nature has disappeared in his mature age. He finds no divine spark or beauty to whatever beautiful objects he now turns such as the rainbow, the rose, the moonlight, the sun light etc. The poet is grief stricken because of the sense of loss of divine glory. The sight of a tree or a field or a flower pathetically reminds him of his loss of celestial glory.
Like Plato, Wordsworth believes in the prenatal existence of soul. The poet offers a philosophical explanation of the celestial light that played on common objects in the days of his childhood. He believes that our souls existed in heaven in close to God before our birth. The soul comes directly from God to this earth. The recollections of
heavenly life clings to the soul of the child. Consequently he can see the divine light flashing upon every object of nature around him. But as the child grows into a boy; boy into a man; man into an old man, he gradually loses this light. Ultimately he loses it completely. He is still a passionate lover of beauty in nature. At last the celestial beauty dies away. The shadowy recollections hang upon him. But he grows blind regarding the loss of celestial glory.
The sense of loss grieves him. He cannot participate in the joy that he finds around him in a spring morning. The whole earth is gay. Children are plucking flowers from thousands of valleys. The young lambs are bounding like tabor. The poet prepares himself to attune his mind to the universal spirit of joy. Yet the casual sight of the tree and flower reminds him of the loss of his celestial glory.
But the poet does not want to repine for the loss of the visionary glory of childhood. This loss is more than compensated for by the mature man's deeper understanding of nature, by the soothing thoughts that spring from the contemplation of human suffering and lastly by the philosophic mind that age brings him. The ripe age facilitates a man with deep thoughts which he cannot express in words or tears:
"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
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