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The Beauty and Sadness of Life’s Fleeting Nature

The mood that predominates over the beginning of the poem is decidedly melancholy, as the speaker observes how everything that’s beautiful about life is destined to pass away. The first two stanzas meditate directly on this difficult fact of mortality. In stanza 1, the speaker begins by describing how every part of the natural world once seemed to him “apparelled in celestial light” (line 4), as though all that was beautiful in life were divine and hence eternal. As an adult, however, he has discovered the sad truth that none of it lasts forever (lines 6–9):

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
                      Turn wheresoe’er I may,
                          By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Similarly, stanza 2 stages a mournful contrast between the speaker’s appreciation of nature’s beauty and the inescapable knowledge of its ephemerality: “But yet I know, where’er I go, / That there hath past away a glory from the earth” (lines 17–18). In the early stanzas of the poem, the speaker’s grief clearly dominates. However, as he turns his attention to the soul’s immortality, he regains his ability to appreciate what’s fleeting. In fact, as he says in the poem’s closing meditation, his appreciation for that which is fleeting grows even deeper: “I love the Brooks which down their channels fret, / Even more that when I tripped lightly as they;” (lines 192–193).

The Immortality of the Human Spirit

The poem’s key theme relates to the immortality of the human spirit. The speaker first approaches this theme from a speculative point of view. In stanza 5, he presents the notion that “the Soul,” which he also calls “our life’s Star” (line 59), has a separate existence from the body. On the one hand, this notion alludes to a similar idea expressed by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. On the other hand, the speaker adopts explicitly theological language that also links his thinking to the Christian belief in an immortal soul (lines 64–66):

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
                      From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

The speaker goes on to describe how, as people grow up and lose their childlike sense of wonder, they gradually forget the truth of the soul’s immortality. It is precisely this process of forgetting that has led the speaker to his current grief-stricken mood. What’s key, however, is that this knowledge isn’t completely lost. And as the speaker recalls the truth of the soul’s immortality, his ability to find joy in what’s ephemeral returns. It’s worth noting here that Wordsworth himself was a Christian, but he often wrestled with the idea of a soul. As he explained in a letter to a friend, he merely wanted to capitalize on the commonness of such a belief to get at a more general truth. In this way, we can also read the poem as a more general meditation on the immortality of the human spirit.

The “Benediction” of Memory

If, as the speaker believes, it is possible to remember the forgotten truth of the soul’s immortality, intentional acts of recollection are key. The speaker develops this idea in stanza 9. The speaker introduces his theory of memory by declaring, “The thought of our past years in me doth breed / Perpetual benediction” (lines 133–134). But it isn’t just any “thought of our past” that bestows a blessing on the speaker in the present moment. The speaker is quick to insist that he isn’t talking about recalling “the simple creed / Of Childhood,” when “new-fledged hope [was] still fluttering in his breast” (lines 136–138). Rather, the speaker emphasizes what he refers to as our “shadowy recollections” (line 149). These recollections refer to experiences when our “obstinate questionings / Of sense and outward things” (141–142) gave us partial insight into an otherwise hidden reality. However dim this insight may be, it is nonetheless “a master light of all our seeing” (line 152) and therefore able to illuminate more profound truths. In this way, our “shadowy recollections” provide us with the intimations of immortality referenced in the title. That is, these recollections “have power to make / Our noisy years seem moments in the being / Of the eternal Silence” (lines 153–55).

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