In The Liberal Imagination, Lionel Trilling argued that this poem is an interplay between the "poetic faculty" and the faculty to comprehend general ideas.
In The Liberal Imagination, Lionel Trilling argued that this poem is an interplay between the "poetic faculty" and the faculty to comprehend general ideas. In its third stanza, its speaker sees "the young lambs bound as to the tabor's sound" while "to me alone there came a thought of grief." This poem describes a "little actor" who will spend his life filling his "humorous stage" with different characters "as if his whole vocation were endless imitation." This poem asks "Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?" and ends by declaring "the meanest flower that blows" can give "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." Its speaker laments the fading of the "celestial light" he once saw in nature, and resolves to find inner strength by recalling the innocence of early childhood. For 10 points, name this poem by William Wordsworth about the ability of children to access the divine.
In The Liberal Imagination, Lionel Trilling argued that this poem is an interplay between the "poetic faculty" and the faculty to comprehend general ideas.
"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" [or the Immortality Ode; prompt on Intimations of Immortality]