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As with many of Wordsworth’s poems, “Intimations of Immortality” takes place both in a concrete place and in the speaker’s mind. The concrete setting of the poem seems to be Wordsworth’s beloved English countryside on one spring day in May. The speaker references this setting on a couple of occasions. At the beginning of stanza 3, for instance, he indicates that he’s walking outdoors with a companion (lines 19–24):

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
       And while the young lambs bound
                      As to the tabor’s sound, 
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief

In stanzas 1 and 2 the speaker has been thinking about times past, but here he draws his attention back to the present with the word “now.” And in the present moment he hears birds singing and sees lambs gamboling about. Such a happy sight contrasts with his “thought of grief,” but “a timely utterance” from a companion interrupts his negative thoughts. Such is the speaker’s turbulent emotional state on “this sweet May-morning” (line 44). For much of the poem, however, the speaker’s thoughts have nothing to do with this pastoral country scene. Instead, his thoughts drift into metaphysical speculation on the immortality of the soul, the degrading effects of time, and the promise of memory. In this sense, most of the poem takes place in the speaker’s mind.

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