Metaphysics of childhood in “Immortality ode”

The writer starts by talking about the beauty of nature,that “apparelled in celestial light,”, but as
time passed,he was no longer able to see it the same way.There was a time when he saw it
differently,so he could refer to when he was a child.However,he still sees the rainbow,the lovely
rose, the moon that looks around the sky,but there is magic about it ,as it used to be.Everything
seemd to have faded away.

The nature around him,singing birds,the lamps that leap and play give him a feeling of grief,but
nature is also the one who gives him strength,with its waterfalls,mountains and winds.He realizes
that it would be wrong to be sad,when the nature is joyful.Nevertheless,he still feel “something that
is gone”,that is missing.

Wordsworth devoted the fifth and eighth stanzas for the idea of childhood. The poet explains his
theory of prenatal existence. Before our birth our soul lives in heaven in intimate touch with God,
the Creator, and this is proved by the innocent smile of a baby who seems to be somewhat Divine.
But the vision of heaven becomes more and more vague as he advances in life and attains maturity.

Wordsworth draws the picture of the child playing with his toys,but his activities are nothing but the
imitations of the adult life.He rhetorically asks him, why would he rush towards the adult life,when
he,as a child, has the access to the pure experience of nature and to his mighty origins?

The poet places the child in a very high position, saying that ‘he is the best philosopher, ‘the
Eye among the blind’, ‘Mighty Prophet. Seer blest’, etc. He means to say that the outward
appearance of a child cannot reveal the immensity of his soul. He is the best philosopher in the sense
that he still retains his spiritual inheritance. While the grown up people are spiritually dead or
ignorant, the child still remembers his real home, Heaven and can understand the mysteries of
Eternity, because he is constantly visited by the vision of God. The child is the possessor of real truths
which grown-up people try all their lives to discover. The poet is happy that he still has some
‘shadowy recollections’ of his childhood and this inspires him to think of Heaven which is our real
home. So he is grateful to the period of childhood, because it is the source of all our joy and the only
guiding star of our life.

Wordsworth finds the explanation of his imaginative power in the capacity of a child to create
and to imagine. While doing so, he has no sense of time or of the limitations of our human state. He
wishes to explain something very special and unique, and the best way in which he can make himself
clear is to point out the example of childhood.