ENGL 335B

Victor Catlett ENGL 335b Cannon Ball Draft 03/31/11

The literary works of Wordsworth in his Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood exemplify his active ability to use Romantic Imagination to revive the seemingly passive connection with nature that is present at the time of infancy through adolescence. Romanticism (or the Romantic Era) was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe. The poem “My heart leaps up when I behold” is the epigraph to his Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood and addresses the identifiable stages of life and how in each stage a human can, through their own use of imagination, be linked to the immortal characteristics of nature. Birth and infancy, being the first stage, represents the inability to find significance in what the adult realm would consider important such as financial stability, education, and fame. However, the first stage dually represents the passively achieved connection to a divine nature. Being a man or the years of adulthood would represent the second stage. An adult has experienced the stresses of monetary achievement or the lack of. Adults have been exposed to love, fear, and grief, have witnessed the unattractive qualities that their current society can reveal and is some cases uphold. This stage of development tests that spiritual link between the human, and a divine nature. In certain cases during the second stage an individual feels as if they have lost this spirit connection entirely. The third stage is seniority on earth and preparing for death. This stage can work as a recovery from the seriousness of adulthood where the link is often severed because of an adult’s inability to find importance in nature. Prior to death individuals strive for that spiritual connection that was severed during their adulthood because of their uncertainty of where death will take them. Wordsworth introduces the natural occurrence of a rainbow as a symbolic figure of unconditional happiness. The use of the naturally beautiful rainbow for inspiration is an example of Romantic Imaginations power to reshape the mortal perception into an immortal understanding of life. The use of the rainbow in My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold seems ideal when one thinks of an attractive occurrence in nature. In the last line, Wordsworth ends the poem with the phrase “natural piety” to describe the devotion to nature that he would love to reacquire now as a man. In the biblical story of Noah’s Arc, the rainbow was proof of God’s promise that He would never destroy the earth by flood again. Wordsworth uses the solidarity of a promise from God to illustrate how, through an active imagination, the link between the human condition and nature will give personal strength during adversity in life. The seventh line of the poem is the most essential to understand, but could be the most confusing if read literally. Wordsworth is quoted saying that a poet has an exalted representational position as a “man talking to men” and in the fourth line he says clearly “I am a Man.” The fourth line is very important to the readers of this poem because Wordsworth is proving to the reader that he is aware of the common human condition. Wordsworth’s To a Butterfly is a poem that embodies what the title, Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, is describing. Wordsworth uses his Romantic Imagination to recall an innocent childhood memory to relive that stage of life. In “The Grasmere Journals” written by Dorothy Wordsworth, Wordsworth’s sister, one learns that young William Wordsworth would actually kill the white butterflies because he and his classmates would consider them the Frenchmen. Dorothy wrote that she did not try to capture them, fearing that she would remove the dust from their wings. Both William and Dorothy’s accounts of their experiences with the butterflies are innocent in that neither could completely grasp their significance. William and his classmates associated them with Frenchman which was completely arbitrary. Dorothy admired them from a distance out of fear of injuring their wings. Both Dorothy and William utilized their imagination to recollect on the childhood scene and put their brains back into the childhood context. In lines 14 and 15 ,“A very hunter did I rush//Upon the prey:” Wordsworth relives the situation and describes himself as the hunter and the butterfly as prey, a truly childish understanding of a white butterfly as compared to the way an adult would view hunting. In the first stanza of To a Butterfly, the adult Wordsworth is in the company of a butterfly and he is almost begging the creature to stay so that he is able to use his Romantic Imagination to achieve a taste of the joy he felt prior to his adolescence.