Sunday 5/8/16

"Intimations of Immortality" is a lyric poem in the form of an ode. Wordsworth completed it in 1804 and describes his feelings as he moves from childhood to adulthood. He believes each man has a soul which is infused with the spiritual memory of heaven and we lose some of that spirituality as time passes as the earth provides its own glories.

 
"THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
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.

                                    

The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth."

Yet now those earthly glories remind the soul of its past, and promises its future.  

“Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour 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.”