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William WordsworthA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The speaker in Wordsworth’s “Ode” believes childhood is the stage of life when humans are closest to the divine: before practical concerns of adult life weaken and break their mystical sense of connection with everything in nature. To children, “meadow, grove, and stream. / The earth, and every common sight” (Lines 1-2) appear covered with “celestial [heavenly] light” (Line 4). This sensation is not a product of religious education, but the result of pure wonder and awe at the richness and beauty of nature, which has “[t]he glory and the freshness of a dream” (Line 5). The speaker mourns his own loss of that spiritual quality, but he recognizes and cherishes it in the children around him, like the “happy Shepherd-boy” (Line 35), whose joyful shouts join other natural sounds made by the birds, the waterfall, the wind in a celebration of the natural world’s splendor.
In the eighth stanza, the speaker praises the child for their “[s]oul’s immensity” (Line 109) and calls them the “best Philosopher” (Line 110) and “Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!” (Line 114). In other words, the speaker perceives this spiritual quality of childhood as greater than the rational or oracular wisdom of even the wisest adults. The adults have lost the child’s sensation of “[i]mmortality” (Line 118), their indifference to death, and the child’s intuitive wonder and joy.
By William Wordsworth
A Complaint
A Complaint
William Wordsworth
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
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Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
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Daffodils
Daffodils
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I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
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Tintern Abbey
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey ...
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London, 1802
London, 1802
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Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads
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My Heart Leaps Up
My Heart Leaps Up
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Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
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She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways
She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways
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She Was a Phantom of Delight
She Was a Phantom of Delight
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The Prelude
The Prelude
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The Solitary Reaper
The Solitary Reaper
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The World Is Too Much with Us
The World Is Too Much with Us
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To the Skylark
To the Skylark
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We Are Seven
We Are Seven
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