Wordsworth's Ode: Intimations of Immortality...

[John Cheddar]

www.bartleby.com/101/536.html

[jordynz2]

line 103 really shows being vs seeming in this poem

"ere this be thrown aside, and with new joy and pride the little actor cons another part"

[kiranp02]

In lines 67-77 i saw a parallel between this poem and Blake's Nurse's Song, in that the author describes the different views of nature depending on the age of the person.

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended; 75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."

[ezram02]

Lines 182-192 parallel Hester's attitude.

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

Similarly, Hester knows she cannot bring back her purity. Instead of mourning her purity, she uses her past to give her strength. She does not give herself up as an outcast; instead she works hard until she is eventually back in the consensus. Also, because of her suffering, she takes pity on others and gives to charity.

[jend02]

A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?


I thought this passage really provoked the idea of the name Pearl and how she was both her mother's greatest treasure and greatest expense of her .The line describes the child as glorious but then continues to discuss the pains he provokes.

[danl02]

I tried looking up a few words in the dictionary and the results make me wonder if the words have changed since his day. For example, steep on line 25 makes no sense to me; what does he mean by it?

Overall, it is a fairly optimistic poem. My interpretation of it is that men lose all touch with the spiritual world while children are fresh from heaven. But even though adults cannot compare with the children in holiness, they still have much good in them even if they can't see it. And just in case all of humanity loses its innocence, good old nature will always remain pure and find a way.

If I had to say which character from the Scarlet Letter this poem relates best with, I'd say Pearl. The child seems of pure innocence when she is first born, but as she gets older, she seems to purposely be sinful or at least cruel. Still, she cannot help but always play or try to find some happiness with nature.

[chrisd02]

The lines that Kiran stated I think are some of the strongest lines in the poem. Wordworth is saying how infants are pure when they are born, but society taints the child as he or she grows. The connection that the child has with heaven goes away as he merges into the rest of society. This can be related to Pearl because a Pearl is beautiful when it comes out of the oyster, but a pearl is not totally white. This can symbolize that Pearl is a treasure from heaven for Hester, but society sees her only as a symbol for Hester's sin.

[laurenf02]

In the lines "the rainbow comes and goes, and lovely is the rose; the moon doth w/ delight look round her when the heavens are bare" I believe that the rainbow could be representative of Pearl as she can be treasured at one moment yet lost in thought the next. Interestingly reference is also made to a rose. As seen in the book, a rose is beautiful yet it also contains thorns. Both the rainbow and the rose represent Pearl's outer beauty which hides a somewhat darker personality.

[markf2]

The lines that Ezra brought up were the lines that jumped out to me the most. They reflect both Hester and Dimmesdale. In Hester's case, because she cannot go back and fix her mistake, she is able to learn from it use her knowledge from it to help raise Pearl to not make her own mistakes. It also ties in with how Hester has moved on past her sin and is living life again, while Dimmesdale has completely fallen into his sin and is tortured by it.