WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)

1. RECAP: Poetry as a passionate, speculative medium
--Is Enlightenment (post-Revolution) still a preferable methodology?
--Do we still have spiritual resources in a post-Enlightenment age (e.g. 1798)?

2. "My heart leaps up..."(aka "The Rainbow") (306/285)

3. "Ode: Intimations of Immortality..."(308/287)
[Intuitions of an afterlife based on childhood memories...]
--Epigraph from "The Rainbow"

Pindaric Ode (A Classical Greek Form for the Chorus in Greek Drama; here an irregular version)

Strophe 1-4: (Poses Speaker's Problem)
#1&2 From the ideal to the fallen
#3 Attempt to rally; but protests too much
#4 The Tree (of Liberty?); the Field (Champs de Mars?); the Pansy ("meanest flower"?) Nature empty of symbolic meaning

Antistrophe 5-8: (Response: Signif. of Child)
#5 & 6 Enlightenment progress? Fall from Light? Earth=prison-house; Nature consoles
#7 The Child: learns to act, imitate
#8 Child as "best Philosopher"

Epode/Stand 9-11 (From Failure to Power)
#9 Thanks for "obstinate questionings"etc.
#10 Celebrate primal sympathy (Tintern Abbey, p 260/237)
--Gratitude for intuition prompted by doubt