Favorite Lines From "Ode."

I greatly enjoyed Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” and found it difficult to pick my favorite passage. However, if I had to choose I would say that lines ten through eighteen (or passage two) is my favorite.

First and foremost I enjoyed this passage because it emphasizes the beauty of the earth. It portrays several aspects in a positive spotlight with lines such as “And lovely is the Rose,” “Waters on a starry night”and“The sunshine is a glorious birth.” Each line really “drew” me in to things I would not normally notice. For example, I wouldn’t usually take the time to stop and admire the beauty of a rose, water on a starry night, or the sun for that matter. These lines actually made me appreciate the simple things in life and ultimately the attractiveness of nature.

Next, this passage really “painted a picture” in my mind as I was reading it. Although there wasn’t a great deal of specific imagery in the stanza I could still “picture” a rainbow, a rose, a moon, and “waters on a starry night” in my head. Also, I would like to mention that I was fond of the rhyme scheme in this passage although it was not completely unique from the rest of the poem.

As for my interpretation of this specific passage I am not sure if there is a deeper meaning than the obvious which is simply the author discussing and observing Mother Nature. If I had to guess I would say that at one time, perhaps when Wordsworth was a child, that nature appeared to be “mysterious” and “fascinating” to him. However, the last line of the passage “That there hath past away a glory from the earth” leads me to believe that he eventually lost interest, and was no longer intrigued by nature perhaps when he became an adult. Or maybe Wordsworth was just not able to admire it the same way he did as a child. He can still see the rainbow, the rose, the moon, etc. but something is different now and isn’t quite the same.