Sunday, July 6, 2014

Wordsworth calls the Child, "Might Prophet, Seer Blest!" What is Wordsworth's view of the child's closness to nature and the imagination?

The Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood  is a rendition and celebration of the innocence of childhood, the wonders of innocence, the love that only a child can sense in their hearts, and the fact that children are in theory "closest to the Kingdom of God" being that they are so recent to life, and so much closer to the goodness of humanity, than adults are.


Wordsworth also basically wonders why a child would want to pretend or want to be adults when being adults only leads you farther and farther from the joys of childhood, and the blessings of innocence.


In reference to imagination and nature, Wordsworth believes that children, and their closeness to God have more creativity and innocence to be unspoilt by the unnecesary vanities of life, hence, they also have what it takes to admire, appreciate, accept, embrace, and love nature for what it is, in the author's world: Another gift from above.


This is all in stanza number 8:



Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie    





   Thy Soul's immensity;


Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep


Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,


That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,


Haunted for ever by the eternal mind, -    


   Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!    


   On whom those truths do rest,


Which we are toiling all our lives to find,


In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;


Thou, over whom thy Immortality


Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,


A Presence which is not to be put by;      


   To whom the grave


Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight    


   Of day or the warm light,


A place of thought where we in waiting lie;


Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might


Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,


Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke


The years to bring the inevitable yoke,


Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?


Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,


And custom lie upon thee with a weight,


Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!


No comments:

Post a Comment