In 1802, after writing the first four stanzas of what would become “Intimations of Immortality,” William Wordsworth set the poem aside. It would take another two years before he’d return to it and complete the remaining seven stanzas, and another three years before it would appear in print with the unassuming title, “Ode.” Eight years later, Wordsworth published the reworked version we know today, with its more grandiose title, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” This extended title provides the reader with something like a summary of the poem, which is essentially a long meditation on the immortality of the human soul. This meditation emerges from the speaker’s melancholy mood on a spring day in a pastoral countryside. The speaker’s mood is caused by his awareness that everything that’s beautiful about life will eventually pass away. But whereas the material body is ephemeral, the speaker posits that the soul has a separate existence that is, in fact, eternal. As children, we retain some awareness of our spiritual immortality, but this awareness dims as we age. However, the speaker concludes that through intentional acts of memory, adults can recollect their obscured eternal nature. This knowledge eventually allows the speaker to take greater pleasure in the world’s ephemerality.

Take a Study Break