tional virtues without the Kipling color, to know and resist their
enemies without self-glorification.
In our day the idea of the nation has become doubtful and debilitated all over the world, or at least wherever it is not being enforced The Immortality Ode
by ruthless governments or wherever it is not being nourished by
immediate danger or the tyranny of other nations. Men more and
more think it best to postulate their loyalty either to their class, or
to the idea of a social organization more comprehensive than that of
the nation, or to a cultural ideal or a spiritual fatherland. Yet in the
I
attack which has been made on the national idea, there are, one
suspects, certain motives that are not expressed, motives that have
less to do with reason and order than with the modern impulse to
CRITICISM, we know, must always be concerned with the
poem itself. But a poem does not always exist only in itself:
say that politics is not really a proper human activity at all; the
sometimes it has a very lively existence in its false or partial
reluctance to give loyalty to any social organization which falls short
appearances. These simulacra of the actual poem must be taken into
of some ideal organization of the future may imply a disgust not so
account by criticism; and sometimes, in its effort to come at the poem
much with the merely national life as with civic life itself. And on
as it really is, criticism does well to allow the simulacra to dictate at
the positive side too something is still to be said for nations, the case
least its opening moves. In speaking about Wordsworth's "Ode: Inagainst them is not yet closed. Of course in literature nothing ever timations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood," I
is said; every avowal of national pride or love or faith rings false
should like to begin by considering an interpretation of the poem
and serves but to reinforce the tendency of rejection, as the example
which is commonly made.1 According to this interpretation-I choo�e
of the response to Kipling shows. Yet Kipling himself, on one occafor its brevity Dean Sperry's statement of a view which is held by sion, dealt successfully with the national theme and in doing so immany other admirable critics-the Ode is "Wordsworth's conscious plied the reason for the general failure-the "Recessional" hymn is
farewell to his art, a dirge sung over his departing powers."
a remarkable and perhaps a great national poem; its import of hu
How did this interpretation-erroneous, as I believe-come into
mility and fear at the moment of national success suggests that the
being? The Ode may indeed be quoted to substantiate it, but I do
idea of the nation, although no doubt a limited one, is still profound
not think it lras been drawn directly from the poem itself. To be
enough to require that it be treated with a certain measure of serioussure, the Ode is not wholly perspicuous. Wordsworth himself seems ness and truth-telling. But the occasion is exceptional with Kipling,
to have thought it difficult, for in the Fenwick notes he speaks of
who by the utterances that are characteristic of him did more than
the need for competence and attention in the reader. The difficulty
any writer of our time to bring the national idea into discredit.
does not lie in the diction, which is simple, or even in the syntax,
which is sometimes obscure, but rather in certain contradictory statements which the poem makes, and in the ambiguity of some of its crucial words. Yet the erroneous interpretation I am dealing with
1 The text of the poem is given at the end of this essay.
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The Immortality Ode
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does not arise from any intrinsic difficulty of the poem itself but
There is another unsubstantiated assumption at work in the comrather from certain extraneous and unexpressed assumptions which mon biographical interpretation of the Ode. This is the belief that a
some of its readers make about the nature of the mind.
natural and inevitable warfare exists between the poetic faculty and
Nowadays it is not difficult for us· to understand that such tacit
the faculty by which we conceive or comprehend general ideas.
assumptions about the mental processes are likely to lie hidden be
Wordsworth himself did not believe in this antagonism-indeed, he
neath what we say about poetry. Usually, despite our general awareheld an almost contrary view-but Coleridge thought that philosophy ness of their existence, it requires great effort to bring these assumphad encroached upon and destroyed his own powers, and the critics tions explicitly into consciousness. But in speaking of Wordsworth
who speculate on Wordsworth's artistic fate seem to prefer Coleone of the commonest of our unexpressed ideas comes so close to the ridge's psychology to Wordsworth's own. Observing in the Ode a
surface of our thought that it needs only to be grasped and named.
contrast drawn between something called "the visionary gleam" and
I refer to the belief that poetry is made by means of a particular
something called "the philosophic mind," they leap to the conclusion
poetic faculty, a faculty which may be isolated and defined.
that the Ode is Wordsworth's conscious farewell to his art, a dirge
It is this belief, based wholly upon assumption, which underlies all
sung over departing powers.
the speculations of the critics who attempt to provide us with ex
I am so far from agreeing with this conclusion that I believe the
planations of Wordsworth's poetic decline by attributing it to one
Ode is not only not a dirge sung over departing powers but actually
or another of the events of his life. In effect any such explanation is a
a dedication to new powers. Wordsworth did not, to be sure, realize
way of defining Wordsworth's poetic faculty: what the biographical
his hopes for these new powers, but that is quite another matter.
critics are telling us is that Wordsworth wrote great poetry by means
of a faculty which depended upon his relations with Annette Vallon,
or by means of a faculty which operated only so long as he admired
II
the French Revolution, or by means of a faculty which flourished by
As with many poems, it is hard to understand any part of the
virtue of a particular pitch of youthful sense-perception or by virtue
Ode until we first understand the whole of it. I will therefore say
of a certain attitude toward Jeffrey's criticism or by virtue of a cerat once what I think the poem is chiefly about. It is a poem about tain relation with Coleridge.
growing; some say it is a poem about growing old, but I believe it
Now no one can reasonably object to the idea of mental determinais about growing up. It is incidentally a poem about optics and then, tion in general, and I certainly do not intend to make out that poetry
inevitably, about epistemology; it is concerned with ways of seeing
is an unconditioned activity. Still, this particular notion of mental
and then with ways of knowing. Ultimately it is concerned with
determination whith implies that Wordsworth's genius failed when
ways of acti
ng, for, as usual with Wordsworth, knowledge implies
it was deprived of some single emotional circumstance is so much too
liberty and power. In only a limited sense is the Ode a poem about
simple and so much too mechanical that I think we must inevitably
immortality.
reject it. Certainly what we know of poetry does not allow us to
Both formally and in the history of its composition the poem is
refer the making of it to any single faculty. Nothing less than the
divided into two main parts. The first part, consisting of four stanwhole mind, the whole man, will suffice for its origin. And such was zas, states an optical phenomenon and asks a question about it. The
Wordsworth's own view of the matter.
second part, consisting of seven stanzas, answers that question and
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The Immortality Ode
127
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is itself divided into two parts, of which the first is despairing, the
the first part of the Ode, is an extravagantly early age for a dramatic
second hopeful. Some time separates the composition of the question
failure of the senses. We might observe here, as others have observed
from that of the answer; the evidence most recently adduced by
elsewhere, that Wordsworth never did have the special and perhaps
Professor de Selincourt seems to indicate that the interval was two
modern sensibility of his sister or of Coleridge, who were so aware
years.
of exquisite particularities. His finest passages are moral, emo.tional,
The question which the first part asks is this:
subjective; whatever visual intensity they have comes from his response to the object, not from his close observation of it.
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
And in the second stanza Wordsworth not only confirms his senses
but he also confirms his ability to perceive beauty. He tells us how he
All the first part leads to this question, but although it moves in only
responds to the loveliness of the rose and of the stars reflected in the
one direction it takes its way through more than one mood. There
water. He can deal, in the way of Fancy, with the delight of the
are at least three moods before the climax of the question is reached.
moon when there are no competing stars in the sky. He can see in
The first stanza makes a relatively simple statement. "There was
Nature certain moral propensities. He speaks of the sunshine as a
a time" when all common things seemed clothed in "celestial light,"
"glorious birth." But here he pauses to draw distinctions from that
when they had "the glory and the freshness of a dream." In a poem
fascinating word "glory": despite his perception of the sunshine as
ostensibly about immortality we ought perhaps to pause over the
a glorious birth, he knows "That there hath past away a glory from
word "celestial," but the present elaborate title was not given to the
the earth."
poem until much later, and conceivably at the time of the writing
Now, with the third stanza, the poem begins to complicate itself.
of the first part the idea of immortality was not in Wordsworth's
It is while Wordsworth is aware of the "optical" change in himself,
mind at all. Celestial light probably means only something different
the loss of the "glory," that there comes to him "a thought of grief."
from ordinary, earthly, scientific light; it is a light of the mind, shin
I emphasize the word "while" to suggest that we must understand
ing even in darkness-"by night or day"-and it is perhaps similar to
that for some time he had been conscious of the "optical" change
the light which is praised in the invocation to the third book of
without feeling grief. The grief, then, would seem to be coincidental
Paradise Lost.
with but not necessarily caused by the change. And the grief is not
The second stanza goes on to develop this first mood, speaking of
of long duration, for we learn that
the ordinary, physical kind of vision and suggeEting further the
meaning of "celestial." We must remark that in this stanza Words
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
worth is so far from observing a diminution of his physical senses
And I again am strong.
that he explicitly affirms their strength. He is at pains to tell us how
vividly he sees the rainbow, the rose, the moon, the stars, the water
It would be not only interesting but also useful to know what that
and the sunshine. I emphasize this because some of those who find
"timely utterance" was, and I shall hazard a guess; but first I should
the Ode a dirge over the poetic power maintain that the poetic power
like to follow the development of the Ode a little further, pausing
failed with the failure of Wordsworth's senses. It is true that Wordsonly to remark that the reference to the timely utterance seems to worth, who lived to be eighty, was said in middle life to look much
imply that, although the grief is not of long duration, still we are not
older than his years. Still, thirty-two, his age at the time of writing
dealing with the internal experiences of a moment, or of a morning's
The Immortality Ode
128
THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
129
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walk, but of a time sufficient to allow for development and change of
Wordsworth's own. He tells us that upon "the inanimate cold world"
mood; that is, the dramatic time of the poem is not exactly equivathere must issue from the soul "a light, a glory, a fair luminous lent to the emotional time.
cloud," and that this glory is Joy, which he himself no longer pos
Stanza rv goes on to tell us that the poet, after gaining relief from
sesses. But Coleridge's poem, although it responds to the first part of
the timely utterance, whatever that was, felt himself quite in har
Wordsworth's, is not a recapitulation of it. On the contrary, Colemony with the joy of Nature in spring. The tone of this stanza is ridge is precisely contrasting his situation 'with Wordsworth's. As
ecstatic, and in a way that some readers find strained and unpleasant
Professor de Selincourt says in his comments on the first version of
and even of doubtful sincerity. Twice there is a halting repetition
"Dejection," this contrast "was the root idea" of Coleridge's ode.2 In
of words to express a kind of painful intensity of response: "I feel
April of 1802 Wordsworth was a month away from his marriage to
I feel it all," and "I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!" Wordsworth sees,
Mary Hutchison, on the point of establishing his life in a felicity and
hears, feels-and with that "joy" which both he and Coleridge felt to
order which became his genius, while Coleridge was the nadir of
be so necessary to the p
oet. But despite the response, despite the joy,
despair over his own unhappy marriage and his hopeless love for
the ecstasy changes to sadness in a wonderful modulation which
Sara, the sister of Wordsworth's fiancee. And the difference between
quite justifies the antecedent shrillness of affirmation:
the situations of the two friends stands in Coleridge's mind for the
difference in the states of health of their respective poetic powers.
-But there's a Tree, of many, one,
Coleridge explicitly ascribes the decay of his poetic power to his
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
unhappiness, which worked him harm in two ways-by forcing him
The Pansy at my feet
to escape from the life of emotion to find refuge in intellectual ab
Doth the same tale repeat.
straction and by destroying the Joy which, issuing as "a light, a glory,
And what they utter is the terrible question:
a fair luminous cloud," so irradiated the world as to make it a fit
object of the shaping power of imagination. But Wordsworth tells
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
us something quite different about himself. He tells us that he has
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
strength, that he has Joy, but still he has not the glory. In short, we
have no reason to assume that, when he asks the question at the end
III
of the fourth stanza, he means, "Where has my creative power
gone?" Wordsworth tells us how he made poetry; he says he made
Now, the interpretation which makes the Ode a dirge over departit out of the experience of his senses as worked upon by his coning powers and a conscious farewell to art takes it for granted that templative intellect, but he nowhere tells us that he made poetry out
the visionary gleam, the glory, and the dream, are Wordsworth's
of visionary gleams, out of glories, or out of dreams.
names for the power by which he made poetry. This interpretation
To be sure, he writes very often about gleams. The word "gleam"
gives to the Ode a place in Wordsworth's life exactly analogous to
is a favorite one with him, and a glance at the Lane Cooper conthe place that "Dejection: An Ode" has in Coleridge's life. It is well cordance will confirm our impression that Wordsworth, whenever