O joy! That in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!…
Reference:- The above lines have been taken from the work “Intimations of Immortality” from the Recollection of Early Childhood. This poem is an Ode: Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth composed in 1802 and partly in 1804.
Context:- The poem describes about the year of 1802, when the poet was facing a spiritual crisis, and the ‘visionary’ experiences that he had come across as an adolescent and as a young man, which was the source of his ‘deepest illuminations’ that were gradually losing their shine and glory. This poem gives an expression to the poet’s spiritual crisis, and the causes of his lost glory and an answer to the poet’s problem.
Explanation:- In the given lines, Wordsworth exclaims his appreciation for his youthful admiration of nature, and there is a shift from lamenting the loss of the youthful joy brought forth by nature to being empowered by it. He experiences a surge of joy at the thought that his memories of childhood will always grant him a kind of access to that lost world of instinct, innocence and exploration.
Also, the poet manages to reconcile the emotions and questions he has explored throughout the poem. He realizes that even though he has lost his awareness of the glory of nature, he had it once, and can still remember it. The memory of nature’s glory will have to be enough to sustain him, and he ultimately decides that it is. Anything that we have, for however short a time, can never be taken away completely because it will forever be held in our memory.
The poet uses irregular form of the Pindaric ode, and the length of the lines are vary throughout the text and the poem begins with an iambic metre.
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