Hello and welcome to the Discourse. ‘The Solitary Reaper’ is a poem by William Wordsworth written in 1805 and published in 1807 in his poetry collection Poems: In Two Volumes. It is considered one of his best-known works. The poem was inspired by Wordsworth’s trip to Scotland in 1803 with his sister Dorothy Wordsworth. Another inspiration was his friend and author Thomas Wilkinson’s Tours to the British Mountains,which described a reaper's song in Scottish Gaelic. The passage that inspired Wordsworth is the following: "Passed a female who was reaping alone: she sung in Erse (the Gaelic language of Scotland) as she bent over her sickle; the sweetest human voice I ever heard: her strains were tenderly melancholy, and felt delicious, long after they were heard no more". Thus, this poem is unique for it is not based on the poet’s experience but on his friend’s.
Themes of The Solitary Reaper:
The poem stresses the universality of music. The narrator witnesses an unknown solitary reaper girl working in her field and listens to her song. Though he fails to understand the song, the melody of that song makes it memorable. The poem suggests the ability of art to transcend cultural boundaries and even language itself. The poem also touches on the theme of the limits of poetry and language. The narrator tries everything possible through his poem to describe her song but fails. The poem also contrasts active participation with nature and remaining passive as an observer. The narrator finds the reaper girl and her voice exceptionally beautiful while she continues working in her field and suggests that the beauty she emancipates is that of nature. Being actively involved in her physical labor, she is closer to nature. On the other hand, the narrator, observing the reaper girl is just an observer of nature and not an active part of it.
Structure of The Solitary Reaper:
The poem is a lyrical ballad. The 32 lines of the poem are composed in four Octaves following a consistent pattern. However, there is some variation from the traditional ballad. Ballads follow the common meter with iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter in the alternating lines. Instead of following the common meter, Wordsworth used iambic trimeter in the fourth line of each stanza while all other lines are written in iambic tetrameter. In addition, Wordsworth also used trochees at some places allowing the narrator to have a conversational tone. The rhyming scheme also varies with that of traditional ballads. The first four lines of each octave follow ABAB while the next four lines follow the couplet rhyme of CCDD.
The poet used Apostrophes, Allusion, Enjambment, Caesura, and Alliteration in the poem.
Summary of The Solitary Reaper:
Stanza 1 Lines 1-8
“Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.”
The narrator begins with an apostrophe as he directly addresses the reader. The narrator comes across a beautiful girl (Lass) working alone in the fields of Scotland (the Highland). She is "Reaping and singing by herself." He tells the reader not to interrupt her and then mentions that the valley is full of song. The reaper girl is immersed in her work of cutting and binding while singing a melancholy song while the narrator is so struck by the sad beauty of her song that the whole valley seems to overflow with its sound. The poet used enjambment in lines 1 and 7, while all other lines are end-stopped. The sound of /i/ (assonance) keeps repeating throughout the stanza offering a melody. The narrator creates imagery of green fields in the mountains where a solitary young girl is toiling and drags the reader to cherish her song with the help of an apostrophe.
Stanza 2 Lines 9-16
“No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in someshady haunt,
Among Arabiansands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.”
The narrator then offers a list of things that cannot equal the beauty of the girl's singing. He compares the young woman’s song with ‘Nightingale’ and ‘Cuckoo,’ the birds known for their sweet voices. He asserts that the girl’s song is much sweeter than the sweet songs of any nightingale or cuckoo. He is utterly enchanted that he says that her voice is so thrilling and penetrable like that of the Cuckoo Bird, which sings to break the silence in the ‘Hebrides’ Islands. The Arabian sands and Hebrides Islands symbolize the uniqueness of the girl’s song which cannot be imitated by any nightingale or cuckoo in the vast expanse between Arabia and Scotland (Hebrides mountains). The narrator continues the strongly effective imagery and pulls the reader further into the mesmerizing effect of the reaper girl’s song as if the reader can listen to her now.
Stanza 3 Lines 17-24
“Will no one tell me what she sings?—
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?”
The narrator uses Apostrophe again and asks the readers if they can tell him the meaning of the reaper girl’s song. The reader learns that the speaker cannot understand the words being sung. He can only guess at what she might be singing about. The narrator continues the reader in the imagery which appears so lively. He shows his frustration as he fails to understand the Scottish dialect the girl is singing. He notices the ‘plaintive number’ and melancholy strain of the song, the narrator speculates that her song might be about some past sorrow, pain, or loss ‘of old, unhappy things‘ or battles fought long ago. Or perhaps, he says, it is a humbler, simpler song about some present sorrow, pain, or loss, a ‘matter of to-day.’ He wonders if the girl is singing about a loss of the past or something that may happen again.
Stanza 4 Lines 25-32
“Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;—
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.”
In the fourth stanza, the narrator breaks the illusion of the imagery of the present and clarifies that he is not in the valley, watching the girl. Rather, he mentioned an old memory when he heard the song of the solitary Highland Lass. He tells the reader that even though he did not know what she was singing about, the music stayed in his heart as he continued up the hill. He says that when he was there, he tried to understand her song and share her pain but failed. He concluded that whatever she was singing about, it would not end. Even when he left and mounted up the hill he could still hear her voice coming amongst the produce, she was cutting and binding. Though the poet left that place, the song remained in his heart, long after he heard that song. Despite that strong effect, the narrator failed to describe what the song was about thus admitting to the limits of his poetry.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Rich Like Us is a novel by Nayantara Sahgal, published in 1985, 10 years after the dreadful period of Emergency in India. In 1986, she received the Sahitya Academy Award for the novel.
Nayantara Sahgal belongs to the Nehru-Pandit family. She is the daughter of Vijaylakshmi Pandir and Barrister Ranjit Pundit. Pundit Jawahar Lal Nehru was her mother’s brother, and Indira Gandhi was her cousin. Despite such close proximity with the ruling family of India during that period, Nayantara Sahgal expressed her opposition to tyranny, political corruption, and Nepotism. In 1974, she was about to be appointed as the Indian ambassador to Italy. But because of her critical views on the Indian government, she lost her job. Nevertheless, she continued to oppose and protest the tyrannical attitude of the government. The novel ‘Rich Like Us’ also depicts a woman standing for righteousness, the rule of law, and justice, and suffering consequences due to political corruption.
The story covers 40 years from the 1930s to the late 1970s during the Emergency in India. The novel is divided into several chapters. Some chapters are narrated by an omniscient third-person narrator, while some are narrated by Sonali, one of the main characters of the novel.
The title ‘Rich Like Us’ is introduced as a question, and continues as such throughout the novel. The novel begins with a British businessman interacting with an Indian couple. He says that all he has been told teaches him that if the poor of India would "do like we do, they’d be rich like us." However, when he sees the poverty in Indian streets, he finds it difficult to believe.
Characters of ‘Rich Like Us’:
Rose is one of the lead characters of the novel. She is an English lady, born in East end London who falls in love with a rich Indian businessman Ram. She belongs to the poor working class of London and unconvincingly tries to hide her Cockney accent from her high-born friends. In the 1930’s when she was a young, quick-witted, intelligent, and romantic girl, she met Ram, an influential rich businessman from India at a chocolate shop in London. They discuss India and Ram compares India with Cythera. According to Greek mythology, the Island of Cythera is the birthplace of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. Rose feels intellectually defeated by Ram and instantly falls in love with Ram and to show her love, she buys an old postcard of Cythera. Ram says that India is wonderful where everyone is loved. Rose decides to marry Ram and comes to India. In India, she comes to know that Ram is already married to an Indian woman named Mona. Mona is a submissive woman, a loyal and obedient wife of Ram. Ram admits that he loves Mona and Rose equally while he also begins a short-term affair with Marcella, another British woman. In India, Rose realizes that reality is far different from what Ram depicted India to be. He faces patriarchal discrimination in India and struggles to find a home in this foreign society filled with ancient customs and norms like Sati, and orthodox rituals. Yet, Ram continues to intellectually dominate her and she continues to love him. She lives in the second story of the big mansion of Ram while Mona and her son Dev live in the first story of the building.
Dev is the son of Ram and Mona who fails to accept his father’s second marriage and believes that Rose will harm his business and inheritance interest. He’s a greedy, spoiled brat of a rich father who wishes to attain everything without actually earning anything. Nisha is Dev’s wife, a modern yet submissive Indian woman.
Sonali Ranade is the other lead character of the novel. She is an upright civil servant in the Ministry of Industry. She has been a rebellious and intelligent student throughout her life. Her father tried to arrange her marriage but she opposed it and ran away to London for higher studies where she got admission to Oxford. She meets Ravi Kachru at Oxford who becomes her close friend. Ravi Kachru is an Indian intellectual who is influenced by Marxism. Ravi tries to dominate Sonali intellectually and they do fall in love but Sonali fails to accept his Marxist ideals. She says, “I did admire his (Ravi’s) commitment…. But I couldn’t understand why we had to keep cutting and pasting Western concepts together and tying ourselves to them forever as if Europe were the center of the Universe, and Marx were the last words on Mankind.” Ravi proves to be a hypocrite who prefers power over his own ideals. In India, Sonali lives with her father, her elder sister Kiran, and Kiran’s husband. Other characters include Bheeku, an old street beggar. Rose keeps helping him, feeding him, and taking care of him.
Summary of Rich Life Us:
The story begins in the 1930s when Ram, an Indian businessman visits London for a business trip. In London, he meets a vivacious, young British girl at a chocolate shop. He learns that she belongs to the British working class because of her accent and grows a friendship with her. During their discussion, he learns her name is Rose. Rose is deeply impressed by Ram’s intellectual prowess and immediately falls in love with him and they decide to marry. Ram convinces Rose to come to India and live with him. In India, Rose comes to know that Ram is already married to an Indian girl and he also has a son named Dev. Dev is a spoiled brat who enjoys the perks of being a son of a successful father. He dislikes Rose because she is critical of him and tries to make him learn the ways of honesty and hard work. Dev is also skeptical of Rose because he believes that Rose overshadowed his mother Mona. He believes that Rose grabbed the rightful place of his own mother. Mona too feels cheated and ignored by her husband and tries to commit suicide. However, Rose saves her and tries to be her friend. Mona and Rose develop a gentle friendship while sharing the same husband but Dev despises this arrangement between his two mothers. Rose realizes that though Ram loves her, he is poly-amorous as Ram begins an affair with Marcella, another British woman who is married to Bryan.
Time passes by and India gets independence. Ram continues to attain business and political success while Dev becomes a young, brutish, and ill-mannered rich businessman with friends in the political section of Delhi. He gets married to Nisha, the daughter of an influential politician.
Rose grows a friendship with Sonali, a young and upright civil servant in the Ministry of Industry who is pitted against the contemporary bureaucratic regime. Sonali heroically fights the malice in the bureaucratic hierarchy which has seeped to the core and corroded the Indian society and its long-cherished values. During her younger days, she was a rebellious student who opposed her father’s bid to marry her to some rich businessman and decided to go to Oxford for higher studies. At Oxford, she met Ravi Kachru, a childhood friend with whom she studied at school. Ravi introduces her to the vast world of intellectuals. It is with him that her political knowledge blossoms. Ravi's ardor for communism deepens, yet Sonali, despite Ravi's efforts, questions its plausibility. Sonali mentions, "I did admire and envy his commitment, it was so cloudless. But I couldn't understand why we had to keep cutting and pasting Western concepts together and tying ourselves to them forever as if Europe were the center of the universe, and the Bible and Marx were the last word on mankind." Sonali discusses communism with Ravi, stating that she doesn’t want to stick to any doctrine. Her motivation is personal: being a woman she has lived too many restrictions to voluntarily have another one in her life. Sonali states ‘I don’t like dictatorships, not even of the proletariat, not even as a passing phase because who knows the phase might get stuck and never pass’.
Despite their differences, they develop a romantic relationship. Yet, Sonali is doubtful if she wishes to marry Ravi. She feels that Ravi is actually bossy, rigid and selfish and if she married him she’d have to agree with him all the time, and thus, they break up.
After their education, when they return to India, Sonali observes sudden changes in Ravi. Ravi involves himself quickly with the ruling party and marries Nishi, the daughter of the Indian Prime Minister’s second cousin. Meanwhile, Sonali becomes a civil servant and joins the department in the Ministry of Industry. She finds it difficult to believe that Ravi, who once supported Marxism so much, defended the autocratic rule in India and supported the call to Emergency in 1975.
Rose is still living with Ram in his house along with Mona, Dev, and Nisha, Dev’s wife. Forty years have passed and now Ram is an old, weak man who suffers a heart attack. Rose continues to nurse and serve him. Dev has grown up to become an indolent young man who has seriously been affected by the unusual double marriage of his father. Now when his father is bedridden he sees the opportunity of forging cheques to get his father’s money on his account. Rose notices the ill-intentions of Dev and learns that her rights as a woman and wife are deteriorating, so she turns to her friend Sonali for help. Sonali is already grappling with the dominant nature of Dev who is trying his political power to attain a license to open his new venture, a fizzy drink Hapyola factory. With an admirable rare courage, Sonali refuses to grant permission to open the fizzy drink Hapyola factory to Dev the spoilt son of Mona and Ram. She rebels overtly and fearlessly against the bureaucratic setup. Patriotic, committed, and honest that she is Sonali suffers a rude jolt when she gets her transfer order. Instead of receiving appreciation for having done her duty with a sense of patriotism, she is victimized by the bureaucratic system. She is replaced by Ravi Kachru who immediately allows the license to Dev. Sonali suffers the loss and says, “The emergency has ended my career, but suddenly I did not want a career in the crumbling unprofessionalism that bowed and scrapped to a bogus emergency.” Sonali further suffers the wrath of the political establishment as her father, a shopkeeper is imprisoned for no obvious reason. Meanwhile, Dev succeeds in eliminating his other enemy too as Rose is murdered by the goons sent by Dev. Her death leaves Soali depressed. Marcella and Bryan helped her and encouraged her to take up a research project on seventeenth and eighteenth-century India.
Anyhow, the emergency ends, and the political power at the center changes. So does the fortunes of Ravi. He again changes color and tries to adapt to his older ways. However, Sonali believes that his efforts are truthful and comments, “Kachru becoming Ravi again, of friendship resuming, of love having been really love and not a mistake he had been trying to forget.”
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of Indian English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
Hello and welcome to the Discourse. ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’ is a long complex poem by William Wordsworth, written in 1804, and published in 1807, in his collection Poems: In Two Volumes. The full title of the poem is “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" and it is also known as "Ode", "Immortality Ode" or "Great Ode." In the first four stanzas of the poem, the speaker remembers his childhood and mourns the loss of his youth and the deeper connection he used to have to the natural world. The speaker reflects on what it means to age. The next seven stanzas of the poem expound the personal sentiments and musings of the former part into a more general exploration of changes that transpire as one moves from childhood into adulthood.
Structure of Ode: Intimations of Immortality:
It is a 206-line poem set in 11 stanzas of varied length that may appear like a Pindaric ode but the pattern is much more complex. All the eleven stanzas follow varying rhyming schemes, patterns of meter, and lengths. Each of these stanzas deals with a different angle on Wordsworth's central questions about childhood, memory, and the soul, and each builds on the stanza that came before it. The free-verse nature of the ode makes it appear like a record of developing thoughts. While the poet vividly uses iambic meter throughout the poem, there are variations as trochees have been used in shorter lines. Some lines follow a hexameter, and some are written in trimeter. There are lines written in iambic pentameter and tetrameter and some in Alexandria meter (lines composed of twelve iambs). Assonance, Apostrophe, Aporia, Caesura, Imagery, Metaphor, Personification, Repetition, Allusion, and Parallelism have been used in the poem.
The poem deals with the themes of Time, Youth, Aging, Nature, and Changes and includes Spirituality and a sense of immortality in Nature.
Summary of Ode: Intimations of Immortality:
Wordsworth begins the poem with a short epigraph, three lines taken from his other poem My Heart Leaps Up.
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety. (My Heart Leaps Up)
Stanza 1 Lines 1-9
“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,The earth, and every common sight, To me did seemApparelled 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 speaker begins by declaring that there was a time when nature seemed mystical to him, like a dream, "Apparelled in celestial light." There was something spiritually elevating, and almost religious about the landscape. The “common sights” were not common, they were wondrous.But now all of that is gone. No matter what he does, "The things which I have seen I now can see no more."
Stanza 2 Lines 10-18
“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.”
In the second stanza the speaker says that even though he can still see the rainbow, the rose, the moon, and the sun, and even though they are still beautiful, something is different...something has been lost: "But yet I know, where'er I go, / That there hath past away a glory from the earth." The alternating patterns of the meter mimic the fluctuating perception of space. The speaker is saddened by the birds singing and the lambs jumping in the third stanza. Soon, however, he resolves not to be depressed, because it will only put a damper on the season's beauty. He declares that all of the earth is happy, and exhorts the shepherd boy to shout.
Stanza 3 Lines 19-36
“Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterancegave that thoughtrelief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay; Land and sea
Give themselvesup to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy.”
In the third stanza, the speaker says that, while listening to the birds sing in springtime and watching the young lambs leap and play, he was stricken with a thought of grief; but the sound of nearby waterfalls, the echoes of the mountains, and the gusting of the winds restored him to strength. The speaker also mentions the “cataracts” in this stanza. They are loud and personified to emphasize the racket their waters make. He determines that he’s no longer going to feel sad. His “grief” has been wronging the season. He knows he should be celebrating so he’s going to try. He declares that his grief will no longer wrong the season's joy and that all the earth is happy. He exhorts a shepherd boy to shout and play around him.
Stanza 4 Lines 37 – 58
“Ye blessèdcreatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath itscoronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Freshflowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babeleaps up on his Mother's arm:—
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a Tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of themspeak of something that is gone;
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the sametale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”
In the fourth stanza, the speaker continues to be a part of the joy of the season, saying that it would be wrong to be "sullen / While Earth herself in adorning, / And the Children are culling / On every side, / In a thousand valleys far and wide." He’s fully in, ready to participate alongside the lovely life around him. The repetition “I hear, I hear” has been used to emphasize the speaker’s attempts to give himself over fully to the joy he hears. In the forty-second line the speaker stutters, as if overcome with that same joy. However, when he sees a tree, a field, and later a pansy at his feet, they give him a strong feeling that something is amiss. He asks, "Whither is fled the visionary gleam? / Where is it now, the glory and the dream?"
Stanza 5 Lines 59 – 77
“Our birth is but a sleep and aforgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere itssetting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
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,
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;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.”
The fifth stanza contains arguably the most famous line of the poem: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting." He proposes the possibility that the human soul exists before birth, “elsewhere” and “cometh from afar” when we are born. He says that as infants we have some memory of heaven, but as we grow we lose that connection: "Heaven lies about us in our infancy!" As children this connection with heaven causes us to experience nature's glory more clearly. As children, we still retain some memory of that place, heaven, which causes our experience of the earth to be suffused with its magic—but as the baby passes through boyhood and young adulthood and into manhood, he sees that magic die. Once we are grown, the connection is lost. As we grow old, the splendor of “Heaven” disappears and fades in the “light of common day”. It is this “Heaven” that the speaker has been missing in the first four stanzas.
Stanza 6 Lines 78-85
“Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even withsomething of a Mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.”
In the seventh stanza, the speaker continues to stress that as we grow old and become men, we lose and forget all the glories of heaven that we had as children. The speaker says that as soon as we get to Earth, everything conspires to help us forget the place we came from: Heaven. "Forget the glories he hath known, and that imperial palace whence he came." He also explains the role of Earth. He describes how Earth works as a mother to humankind. It has something of a “Mother’s mind” as it fills its lamp with “pleasures”. The earth is pure in its pursuits, none of its aims are unworthy. The Earth is also a nurse to humanity. “She” does all she can to “make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man” forget “Heaven” of the pre-birth time. It is best, the nurse-earth thinks, for humankind to forget about the “imperial palace whence” they came from.
Stanza 7 Lines 86 -108
“Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years' Darling of a pigmy size! See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learn{e}d oA wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongueTo dialogues of business, love, or strife; But it will not be longEre this be thrown aside, And with new joy and prideThe little Actor cons another part; Filling from time to time his "humorous stage" With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, That Life brings with her in her equipage; As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.”In the seventh stanza the speaker sees (or imagines) a six-year-old boy, and foresees the rest of his life. The child learns to love, he’s cared for, and is taught how to act by his mother and father. The boy imitates what it’s going to be like to grow older with charts. Planning “A wedding or a festival,” and so on. The boy is shaped by their influence. As the child will grow old he will imagine various roles to fill and he can fill them by learning the “dialogues of business, love, or strife”. But, before long he will change his mind and he will “con another part”. The speaker wants to know why this child is choosing to grow up and cast aside the joys of youth. Why would one want to engage in “endless imitation”. It seems to the speaker that his whole life will essentially be "endless imitation."
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!”
In the eighth stanza, the speaker speaks directly to the child, calling him a philosopher. It is only this boy and by default those of his age, that have access to “those truths”. He could tap into the Heaven of his birth if he chose to, a fact the speaker is trying to get across to him. Those who are older are toiling to find that time before birth in which everything was illuminated. The speaker cannot understand why the child, who is so close to heaven in his youth, would rush to grow into an adult. He asks him, "Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke / The years to bring the inevitable yoke, / Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?" Stanza 9 Lines 130 – 169
“O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our pastyears in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.”
The ninth stanza is the longest, containing 38 lines. In this stanza, the speaker changes his tone to optimism and experiences a flood of joy when he realizes that through memory he will always be able to connect to his childhood, and through his childhood to nature. He thinks of the past that he has lost, and how he intends to move forward. His past is remembered in nature and he can take pleasure in the fact that this is always going to be the case. There is nothing that can “abolish or destroy” his childhood (memories). It establishes our connection with Heaven eternally no matter what the season or difficulty of the present. No matter, he adds, how far “inland we may be” there is a connection. The “immortal sea” is the insight that “brought us hither” to life on earth.
Stanza 10 Lines 170 – 188
“Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
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.”
In the tenth stanza the speaker harkens back to the beginning of the poem, asking the same creatures that earlier made him sad with their sounds to sing out: "Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!" He also brings back the image of the lambs bounding and the drum sounding. The speaker knows now that he can take comfort in the past, in “primal sympathy”. It happened, so it cannot be undone. It will always exist in memory. He celebrates “In the soothing thought” that faith exists through death and years bring “the philosophic mind” and spring will come out of suffering. Even though he admits that he has lost some of the glory of nature as he has grown out of childhood, he is comforted by the knowledge that he can rely on his memory. Stanza 11 Lines 189 – 206
“And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I trippedlightly as they;
The innocentbrightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” In the final stanza, the speaker addresses the Landscape, the mountains, meadows, hills, and groves, and says that nature is still the stem of everything in his life, bringing him insight, fueling his memories, and his belief that his soul is immortal. He says that when he was young, as the six-year-old in previous stanzas, he believed himself immortal. He felt as though he could push past youth and adulthood would be better and forever. He’s smarter than that now and takes joy in his mortality. He knows he’s going to die and that he must accept and love his human heart. The speaker loves nature all the more because he knows he won’t last within it forever. However, his soul is immortal and that is why the smallest and least significant flower can stir up in him deep and moving thoughts. So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
