“Ode: Intimations of Immortality”—An Analysis

O.K. Mantz

Beginning as he does in so many other poems, Wordsworth first establishes the transience of the natural world. All things change, every instance realizes a new nature, a different condition, and those things seen, one “now can see no more” (line 9). A certain glory has “past away…from the earth” with every viewer moving toward an unknown future devoid of the beauty of the present. (line 18). However transient, Nature proves joyful, carefree almost to the point of carelessness. When beholding his surroundings, Wordsworth marks that “all the earth is gay; land and sea give themselves up to jollity” (lines 29-31).

Man, in contrast, is prone to sorrow; for “while the birds thus sing a joyous song,” an unmentioned “thought of grief” enters into Wordsworth’s mind. And how often does the individual suffer from a melancholic disposition? But Nature, no matter how disastrous and near to death, seems to discover some source of glee, a thin threshold of joy to cling to (lines 19-22). Perceiving this quality, perhaps in envy, Wordsworth attempts to emulate that joy, discover its source, and reclaim “the visionary gleam…the glory and the dream” (lines 56-57). In youth he marks that same carefree spirit, that same bliss that seems infused in, and indeed inseparable from, the natural world. Youth, he declares, is “Nature’s Priest”—a necessary title that carries immense significance (line 72).

A priest mediates between humans and the divine through interpreting and performing sacred rites. Describing childhood as “Nature’s Priest” carries the implication that, only through one’s youth, can the individual come into relation with the divine, i.e. Nature. Nature, or rather Nature’s joy and bliss, cannot be comprehended, much less reclaimed as a “Man” in old age, but must be accessed through its “Priest” which is one’s own time of carefree carelessness, which is one’s youth.

Like Death, the loss of Nature’s joy remains an “inevitable yoke” where the matured individual loses “delight and liberty” (line 124 and 136). Hopeful still, Wordsworth continues to ponder whether or not this joy may be rescued from the destructive hands of old age and the fatal hold of adulthood. Something thrives still within the individual, and their “nature yet remembers what was so fugitive” (lines 131-132).

Although the mature Man has deserted his youth, the Priest of Nature, and thus no longer retains access to that carefree bliss, Man yet has his memory! The individual returns to their youth by reminiscence, for that will “perish never” and no “Man or Boy, nor all that is at enmity with joy, can utterly abolish or destroy” (lines 156-160)! One may always and at any time return to youth through the mind’s eye, the soul’s sight “which brought us hither, can in a moment travel thither” (lines 164-165).

And in this act of reclaiming Nature’s joy through Nature’s Priest—Youth through maturity’s memory—Wordsworth rejects grief and “rather find[s] strengths in what remains behind” (lines 179-180).