静岡県立大学短期大学部
研究紀要第９号
1995年度Wordsworth’s Metrical Architectonics:
A Study of the ”Intimations Ode”
Part III19

Wordsworth’s Metrical Architectonics:
A Study of the Intimations Ode”
Part III

Steven J. Willett
Stanza IX had ended with a strange and haunting moment of synaesthesia. The shadowy recollections that are thefountain light of all our day

have the power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being／Of the eternal Silence, and from that silence our soul can see ―in certain moments of calm reflection ― immortal children sporting on the shore and hearthe mighty waters rolling evermore.”
Stanza X opens with an outburst of radiant mundane song. The joy that has always been w
ith us since stanza IV is summoned back, by an obvious almost peremptory rhetorical gesture(Then sing, ye birds . . . .”) in line 169, to the foreground of the Ode. Again the lambs arebounding As to the tabor’s soundin May, to the spirit ditties of no tone. Suddenly we tooare called back in line 172 from the eternal Silence, which is also a sound ofwaters rollingevermore, to join the noisy crowd of natural and human celebrants in thought. But this is ofcourse not the noise of our noisy years; they have been as it were swallowed up in silence. Two substantial passages of trochaic tetrameters acatalectic (line 183 is the only variation from troc
haic movement in the two runs) provide a dance-like celebration of the poet’s reconciliation wit
h the loss of vision.
The first passage, in lines 172-175, is a transposition of the pastoral joy in stanza IV.

Wein thought will join the crowd of May revelers. The nominative pronoun makes clear what the frequent use of us andour in stanza IX implied: that the truth found there is not uniqueto Wordsworth. We all, in some measure, possess it. The addition of in thought

does not mean he is feeling his joy coldly and intellectually. He will join the celebration not literally but in sympathetic thought; he does indeed hear the joy, feel it all. But it is a maturer mind that now sees with a withan eye／That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality(198-199).

The second passage, in lines 180-186 proclaims in a strangely hovering rhythm certain com
pensations that follow from the interpretation of memory in IX.149-161. The lasting metaphysicalconsequence, if you will, is that we can occasionally see the immortal sea; the daily emotional
consequence, on the other hand, is a complex feeling of primal sympathy,” soothing thoughts
sprung from human suffering andfaithin life beyond death. This complex constitutes the phi

losophic mind of later years. Wordsworth has here proclaimed something as a prophetic teacher,as a vates in Horace’s sense of the word, that we must either face or ignore. He has proclaim
ed difficult compensations. He won’t let us ignore them by the rhythm. What I called the strang
ely hovering meter above tries to impart dance to compensations that resolutely refuse to be dan20

Steven J. willett

ce-like. The effect of the falling rhythm is more like a march than a dance. It is a march into t
he philosophic mind. If the meaning of memory is truly what the poet says it is, then we are all souls destined to sport by that immortal sea. Each of us is, therefore, infinitely precious andmust be perceived that way. The primal sympathy is this perception. The stresses of the down
ward march fall heavily on key words: primal,” soothing thoughts,” human suffering
aith that looks through death.

andfThe pastoral joy that insensibly has become a march steps decis

ively into a summarizing iambic pentameter at the end of the stanza. The transition from fallingto rising meter is sharp and all the more unexpected given the parallel syntax with the trochaic
passage: it almost seems to spring from the worddeathat the end of line 186. This is oneof three or four words (depending on lineation) that lack rhyme, and is no accident. By refusi
ng a rhyme towith death

death

Wordsworth forces us to notice the internal consonant rhyme offaith

in the final tetrameter line. He also doubles the effect by building up to the unrhy

med word through five pairs of couplet rhyme from 175 to 185, the longest such sequence in t
he poem. The absence of an expected rhyme to
kes us look for the corresponding rhyme to

death

mind.

180-181, where the poet says we shall not grieve butehind.

not only foregrounds that word but maThat rhyme occurs some distance back inrather find／Strength in what remains b

Couplet rhyme, absence of rhyme and meter all come to the strongest possible focus on the philosophic mind.
It is easy to say that years spent in company of a philosophic mind are no recompense forthe radiance that was once so bright” (176). But it is only easy if one ignores the complex process by which Wordsworth reaches those years. He pays full respect to what is lost, but also full respect to what has been gained. On the one side, the loster, the master light of all our seeing.

visionary splendour; on the oth

He has won through to this resolution by suffering, and by facing its consequences, not by evading them. The sense of learning by suffering in fact suffuses the last two stanzas in a way reminiscent of Aeschylus.１ In the Hymn to Zeus from theparodos of the Agamemnon, the chorus, while commenting on the incidents that preceded Aga
memnon’s departure from Aulis, note (176-183) that for mortal men wisdom comes by the law ―which they also call a blessing in lines (182-183) ― that suffering shall win understanding:Wordsworth’s Metrical Architectonics:
A Study of the ”Intimations Ode”
Part IIIThe pain of remembrance of suffering

21

that trickles before the heart

exactly captures that pat

hos of memory at the center of the Ode. But the pain is a blessing, Aeschylus thought, and W
ordsworth had the courage to face the blessing even if some of his modern critics ― who perha
ps have never felt either visionary splendour or primal sympathy” ― do not. The poignant lin
es on the lost splendour in the grass(X.176-179) or, more powerfully, the following lines from the last stanza (193-200), evoke this Aeschylean sense of suffering transcended by wisdom:
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
This is why I have argued that attention to the progression from one complex of feeling to anot
her is so important in stanza IX. We come to see μάθοζ only by following Wordsworth throu
gh πάθοζ, to see the master light only by following loss back through those obstinate questionsings／Of sense and outward things.

The poem, like life, must be lived through. We canlive it through in full sensitivity or we can retreat into willful refusal. Wordsworth chooses theformer.
Let’s look a little more closely at these two passages in which

Wordsworth restates his sense of loss from the perspective of a hard-won wisdom. He encloses the first (176-179) between the two trochaic runs in stanza X. Loss is remembered between one passage of joy and anoth
er of mature reflection, and the loss is faced by giving it full expression through metrical variati
ons:xx ´ xx ´ ∩x´´ x
What though the radiance which was once so bright＿Bx ´ x ´ x ´ x
x x ´Be now for ever taken from my sight,＿B22Steven J. willettx´ x x ´´ x ´Though nothing can bring back the houröo＾xx x ´x ´x x x ´∩´ x
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower.
＿B＿B
These lines still beat with loss, but it is a lighter beat as the several promotions indicate, and does not therefore quite have the deep plangor I noted in the first stanza. The assertive confidenc
e in line 176 is underscored by an initial inversion, drawing our attention to the loss that has n
ow been surmounted. But it is still loss, and the implied offbeat on bring backin line 178 isthe poet’s way of saying that the suffering of remembrance can never be entirely obliterated byany philosophic mind. There is an almost valedictory aura about the hexameter in line 179, wit
h its two relieving promotions, as though the poet were bidding farewell not to loss so much as
the grief that loss has brought him. The line stretches out rhythmically for one last look backw
ard tothe glory and the dream.”

The companion passage in stanza XI (193-200), which I quoted above, resembles it rather
closely:x ´xxx´´´ x
´I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,∩x´ x´ x ´´ x x´
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;oö＾x´ ∩x´ x x x ´ x´
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day＿Bx ´ x ´Is lovely yet;x ´x ´ x ´x ´ x ´The Clouds that gather round the setting sunx ´ x ´ x ´ ∩xxx ´Do take a sober colouring from an eye＿Bx xxx ´x´´´´That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;öo＾x´ x ´x ´x ´ x ´x´
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
There are two implied offbeats that serve as rhetorical intensifiers: one on tripped lightly (194)with stress initial pairing to emphasize that the poet now loves the brooks even more than in his youth because he loves them with a primal sympathy for the human condition he lacked as aWordsworth’s Metrical Architectonics:
A Study of the ”Intimations Ode”
Part III23

child (the dimeter in line 196 does the same thing by metrical shortening), and one onkept(199) with stress final pairing to accentuate the faith that looks through death.

Andwatchthen the whole passage stretches out into another valedictory hexameter precisely like the one instanza X, but here it is a farewell of pure calmness that recalls the closing words of the chorus (1755-1758) from Samson Agonistes:
His servants he with new acquist
Of past experience from this great event
With peace and consolation hath dismist,
And calm of mind all passion spent.
Although there has been no tragic catastrophe, no Yeatsean

Black out! Heaven blazing into the head, the issues raised are of equal moment to humanity. Wordsworth has made us feel them
to be so with a very simple repertory of images, with things so simple as brooks and flowers,
with the commonplace that is not common if we know how to look at it.
The final stanza is completely in pentameter except for the one dimeter and one hexameterI have already noted. This is the closest to the confident rhythmic movement of blank verse that we find in the Ode, and suggests an epideictic presentation of serene joy. Three initial inversio
ns, like chased gold, gleam in the burnished regularity of the last four lines:x x ´ x ´x ´x ´´Thanks to the human heart by which we live,x x ´ x ´ x ´x ´´Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,xx ´x ´ x ´ x ´∩´To me the meanest flower that blows can givex x ´ x ´ x ´x ´´Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
These four lines are, of course, a generalizing recapitulation of the wisdom Wordsworth has achi
eved and in the climax of the Ode glow with the placid, almost reticent, joy thrown on them by the inversions. The final stanza also returns to the first personal singular pronoun (191, 193,194) in a sign, perhaps, that this is the particular wisdom the poet has won and we must, by t
he same process, win our own.
We have now completed our long rhythmic analysis of the Intimations Ode. The results show clearly that Wordsworth has used meter not only to heighten local emotional effects but toorganize theme, rhetoric and structure. To read the Ode metrically is read it architecturally, to trace out its dynamic architectonics. Stanzaic meter has sometimes been compared to a horizonta
l movement that plays against a vertical movement of rhyme. That play reaches its highest deg
ree of complexity in stanza IX before passing through the joy of stanza X to end with the mea
nest flower that blows in stanza XI. The craftsmanship is so intricate it seems invisible, as invi

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Steven J. willett

sible as that mean flower unless one knows how to look.

1 The classical scholar Gilbert Highet briefly noted a parallel with the Aeschylean conception ofsuffering in The Classical Tradition (New York: Oxford UP, 1949) 252. He cited the line
Another race hath been, and other palms are won

as an example of it.

2 Aeschylus Agmemnon, ed. Eduard Fraenkel, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1950) 1:100. See 2:113-14 for Fraenkel’s analysis of this passage.

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