It is far too shadowy a notion to be recommended to faith, as more than an element in our instincts of immortality. To that dream-like vividness and splendour which invest objects of sight in childhood, every one, I believe, if he would look back, could bear testimony, and I need not dwell upon it here: but having in the poem regarded it as presumptive evidence of a prior state of existence, I think it right to protest against a conclusion, which has given pain to some good and pious persons, that I meant to inculcate such a belief. In later periods of life I have deplored, as we have all reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite character, and have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in the lines– At that time I was afraid of such processes. Many times while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. With a feeling congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature. I used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and almost to persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I should be translated, in something of the same way, to heaven. I have said elsewhere–īut it was not so much from feelings of animal vivacity that ‘my’ difficulty came as from a sense of the indomitableness of the Spirit within me. Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being. To the attentive and competent reader the whole sufficiently explains itself but there may be no harm in adverting here to particular feelings or ‘experiences’ of my own mind on which the structure of the poem partly rests. Two years at least passed between the writing of the four first stanzas and the remaining part. This was composed during my residence at Town-end, Grasmere. Frank Hall, Minister Emeritus – Dear Friends From Your Senior Minister: Facing Grace.Advocates for Prevention of Gun Violence.Faith Formation for Children and Youth 2022-23.How did you become a Unitarian Universalist?.Of his later work, The Prelude, published posthumously, is the most significant. Generally considered the greatest of the Romantic poets, Wordsworth's most creative poetry is his early work with its main themes of the English countryside and the revolutionary spirit of the age. He spent some time in France shortly after the French Revolution whose cause he espoused and in 1797 moved to Somerset with his favourite sister, Dorothy, where he developed a close association with Coleridge. Both his parents died by the time he was thirteen and he was brought up by relatives. He was educated at Hawkshead grammar school and at St. John's College, Cambridge. Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, the son of an attorney. William Wordsworth, the greatest of the Romantic poets, gloried in nature, but here he reflects upon the inspiration of urban London as he experienced it from Westminster Bridge. In years that bring the philosophic mind. Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower What though the radiance which was once so bright Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
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