WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: Intimations of immortality Flashcards
‘child is father of the man’
syntax ‘child’ before ‘man’ paradoxical, ‘childs’ mindset is good
‘there was a time’
fairytale , appropriate to theme of mythologizing early childhood
‘the rainbow comes and goes’
mythological connotations
- ‘rainbow’ estranges the pessimistic and wistful undercurrents that ‘rain’ tends to echo on society
- ‘rainbow’ transient- its splendour is fading and temporary
‘birds thus sing a joyous song…young lambs bound’
contrasting ‘birds’ = freedom expansive sky
‘lambs’ = restricted and bound depiction between both worlds earth and heaven
’- i feel it all’
overwhelmed with feeling, cauesura = gasp for breath inability to speak due to intensity of feeling
‘this sweet may morning’
4 words spring = simplicity of childhood
‘Babe’
capitalized = young form of Jesus
‘not in utter nakedness’
when people are born they aren’t stripped of imagination and jollity like adults
‘the youth who daily farther from the east’
- sun rises in the east and sets in the west
day is ending like youth is ending turns to old age
‘the Man’
begins with Baby then Boy now Man
- tracking stages of life throughout very gradual and unapparent
we unknowingly grow up and change
‘A wedding or a festival’
‘A mourning or a funeral’
alliteration emphasises sharp contrast in connotations of the words
- syntactically placed on top ‘festival’ = life and abundance ‘funeral = death speed of life
‘business love or strife’
syntax capitalism
‘sing ye birds… lambs bound’
refers back to first three lines of the third stanza = 3 = tripartide nature of the world as heaven earth and waters
- gives poem symmetry and finality
- contrasts passive tone initially ‘while’ now imperative ‘sing’
‘though nothing can bring back the hour’
simple vocab mostly monosyllabic - must value your time dont waste
‘new born day’
‘mans mortality’
iamges of birth and death only 4 lines apart
