Wordsworth

             Wordsworth's writing encompasses this belief; at birth we are in our highest state of innocence and throughout life we become corrupted and fall into a state of experience. He paints this portrait for us in his two titles "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798" and "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood."
             The subjective and meditative lyrical poem "Intimations of Immortality" possesses the theme of man's inherent goodness. In section I of the poem the first vision the reader sees is pristine. These lines, "There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Aparelled in celestial light, The glory and freshness of a dream," (795) draw the parallel of nature to the divine. This moment of intersection between man and nature show us of Wordsworth's belief that that the natural world has spiritual power. He compares his "every common sight" in this vision to celestial light. The celestial light being the beginning or Creation, and provided the fact that "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," we know that this moment is a recollection of the state of innocence. In the following lines, "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," (795-6) Wordsworth makes evident this spiritual blindness from the fall of innocence into experience.
             In section V of "Intimations of Immortality" Wordsworth uses the idea of pre-existence as a metaphor to make his readers feel this sense of innocence and pure spirituality. He says, "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:" (797).
             Romantics view maturity as the death of the soul. The author says, "Shades of a prison-house begin to close
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Wordsworth. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 19:48, April 19, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/92865.html