Intimations

Question 1

Briefly summarise ww’s intimations

Answer 1

• Mourning the loss of childhood
• unable to feel emotions of the past
• Something is always missing or lost
• But he is comforted by relying on memory

Question 2

Themes

Answer 2

• Childhood
• Religion
• Memory
• Nature

Question 3

Structure and form and analysis

Answer 3

• no single rhyme scheme but individual patterns in each stanza (2nd stanza- half is alternate rhyme- closer or more complete with nature- remembering)
• Stanzas vary in length- memory forever changing, longing for youth- unstable train of thought, sometimes closer to nature than other times.

Question 4

Quote in epigraph

Answer 4

‘The Child is Father of the Man’

• syntax - natural order that children have authority over mankind however this has been manipulated by society
• This is paradoxical

AO3
‘The childhood of today in the manhood of tomorrow’
- Children will have control in the end
- importance WW places on childhood memories as this is when u are the most pure and honest– fades w age

Question 5

Quote about rainbow

Answer 5

‘Rainbow comes and goes’

• Assonance- mournful
• ‘Rainbow’- symbol of hope and in bible it symbolises gods promise to never destroy the earth again w floods- first appearance of a rainbow in the bible- symbolises promises, childhood, hope.
• Transient- like memories of childhood.
• ‘comes and goes’ - portrays nature as childlike- closeness of children and nature.
• THE SUBLIME, -grasp at an idea, but not fully there.

Question 6

Quote about celestial light

Answer 6

‘Apparelled in Celestial light’
- allit. of ‘l’, whimsical, light/heavenly sound

‘Celestial light’

• Mentioned in John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, after Satan and his rebel angels had fallen from heaven.
• WW inspired by JM, this light is projected onto earth rather than heaven, compares nature to heaven.
• We symbolise the fallen angels who mourn the loss of this celestial light.

Question 7

Quote of lambs

Answer 7

he thinks about grief while ‘young lambs bound’

• Sacrificial
• Jesus referred to as the ‘lamb of god’
• lambs are young, ‘youth of god’, shows that children and the youth can redeem the sins of mankind, likening children to Jesus Christ, giving them ultimate power.