The poem which is analyzed is Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
from William Wordsworth. Later, it will be analyzed by using Expressive criticism that treats a
literary work primarily in relation to its author and defines poetry as an expression, or overflow,
or utterance of feelings, or as the product of the poet's imagination operating on his or her
perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; it tends to judge the work by its sincerity, or its adequacy to
the poet's individual vision or state of mind; and it often seeks in the work evidences of the
particular temperament and experiences of the author who, consciously or unconsciously, has
revealed himself or herself in it (Abrams and Harpham, 2011).
In Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, the
interconnection of authors mind and matter that is the core of the unitive vision can be seen in
verse:
Appareled in celestial light, the glory and the freshness of a dream
It is a metaphor to explain a state of mind through which we can attain a level of
spiritual awareness and clarity of thought that will allow us to do great thing in order to
emphasize and give strength to the poem s Livingston (1991). It shows that there is a spirit that
inspires creativity and transcends our mortal existence on earth and that this spirit is evident in
childhood when we are in a state of innocence as the idea of the autonomy of childhood as a
more authentic and original way of life. However, the poet does not feel the spiritual
enlightenment that he had experienced in his childhood which means, he misses something in
life which is trapped in his childhood moment and the idea of how the author reach the maturity
appears in some verse.
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, whereer I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth
From that verses, the author perceives that there is still a condition of spirituality in
nature to get that enlightenment back. Even he know that in his mind, something has changed.
Some verses also show the idea that represents a previous step in Wordsworths process towards
sight, feeling and insight in getting his enlightenment back.
..I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng.
I have heard the call / Ye to each other make..
In those verses, the poet can only hear and not yet see. The author pretends that he
can hear the nature voices. He can bear the blessed creatures as they rejoice in the world, but he
himself is shut out from it. This process is an absence of spirituality that appeared in the first
stanzas. The author still cannot find the real spirit that is missing in his life. The feeling of
emptiness, having no inspiration are clearly shown here as mental powers of the author. Maybe
the poet feels that his imaginative process is stuck. So, he does something like that in order to
bring his inspiration back.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our lifes Star............
There is not a complete forgetting, as the image of heaven and divinity is still perceived
by the boy. A boy who still have no complexity in his life. A boy who still have no problem in
defining who he is. In this verse, the poet wants to feel the same feeling as the boy as it is
described here.
Finally the poet finds that spirituality still exists in his soul. The word something
describes how the authors need those first affections and shadowy recollections that comes
from an earlier stages of life, or it can be said in childhood time. The problem of the poet is
actually from this verse.
fallings from us, vanishings
Though inland far we be,
Our ouls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither
Can in a moment travel thither
It shows the inability to grasp and know what this spirituality exactly is, there is the
sense that it is a guide and has power to enliven and bring peace to the mind of the author. He
knows that the radiance which was once so bright cannot be grasped anymore by him, he can
still find comfort and joy from the memory of his past feelings.
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch oer mans mortality
The end of the poem shows an emotional feelings from the author. The age is something
that can be counted and stop when the person die. But the memories will remain as long as the
person remember the moment.
References
1.
Abrams, Meyer Howard, & Harpham, Geoffrey. 2011. A Glossary of Literary
Terms: Cengage Learning.
2.
Livingston, Myra Cohn. 1991. Poem-Making: Ways to Begin Writing Poetry:
HarperCollins.
