"Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" (also known as "Ode", "Immortality Ode", or "Great Ode") is a poem written by William Wordsworth and published in Poems in Two Volumes in 1804. Therefore, these memories alone are not enough to make sure that everyone will be remembered after they die, but they do offer some consolation. However, for Wordsworth, despite the fact that he believes that humanity has potential for good, there is still enough evil in the world that we need something more than just mortal lives to keep us going. In other words, without these intuitions of immortality, we would have nothing to keep us going except our own desires which would soon lead to nihilism. He calls them "the moral law within", and without them there can be no free will and thus no morality. For Kant, these intuitions are necessary conditions for humanity as an end in itself rather than merely a means to another end. This is different from Immanuel Kant's use of this term. These memories give him hope for the future because even though he will eventually die, he will still live on in others. Wordsworth's speaker closes the poem by proclaiming that he can always turn to his history, his recollections, to recall what it was like to be a child. Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea.Intimations of Immortality from William Wordsworth's "Recollections of Early Childhood" discuss growing up and losing one's connection to nature. So the poet perceives, even in maturity, the fresh, lively, and intuitive childhood vision. Even in his age, man’s best wisdom and noblest aspirations are shaped by the mere recollections of what he felt and dreamt as a child, and nothing ‘can utterly abolish or destroy this. The child, before ‘our mortal nature did tremble like a guilty thing surprised’, has the ‘truths that wake to perish never’. Over the child ‘immortality broods like a day’, and thereby bespeaks his high instincts. Childhood is the most treasured memory of human life. The child is the best philosopher, who keeps his heavenly heritage in his earthly stay. He looks upon the child as the ‘mighty Prophet’, the ‘seer blest’. To Wordsworth, in fact, childhood seems glorious for its kinship with heaven. He also feels that the endless questions of the child are the marks of his spiritual existence, free from all earthly fetters. The poet finds in childhood the richness of spontaneous delight, simple faith, and fresh hopes. The recollections of his heavenly glory also remain partly present in him. But as he grows old, he gets knowledge and experience of the human world and loses his intuitional delight in Nature, brought by his spiritual retrospection. He still retains naturally, at least partly, in him his heavenly association. The poem shows, that in his childhood, rather in his infancy, man is very fresh from heaven on this earth. But, as childhood gradually passes into manhood, this vision fades away into the light of common day’ and ‘the glory and the dream’ do no longer remain. In childhood, Nature seems to wear ‘the glory and freshness’ of a dream, and every natural object appears ‘apparelled in celestial light’. The poet pays here an eloquent tribute to childhood and elevates this with a spiritual insight. Its main theme is the glorification of childhood. ‘ Ode on Intimations of Immortality‘ is a sort of spiritual autobiography of William Wordsworth.
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