William Wordsworth is really a great lover of nature in all forms. It has remained his main theme and made him able to explain his inner feelings. He has composed several poems on childhood, but this poem is known one of the best poems. It was completed in 1804 and published in poems, in Two Volumes in 1807. It consists of eleven stanzas which are further divided into three parts. His first part is connected to childhood and the second part to his grown up age or manhood, where he spends greater time to follow mundane thoughts. His third part depicts positive response to the problem of the lost of nature.
In this poem, William Wordsworth discusses his childhood. He describes it a double vision of childhood. According to him, one is that of the childhood and the other is the childhood which we carry within us like a memory. This double vision is further described by Alec King as the visible childhood and the invisible childhood. Its first four stanzas describe the childhood and its connection to nature. In this age, the child has the ability to see the divine glory of nature. He calls the child a great philosopher due to its pre-existed memory. According to Alec King, the soul enters human life at our birth as an episode in its immortal life. It is exiled for a time from its divine home, but in its first years, it does not forget its home or the divine light which is its source or company. That’s why he is adhered to nature. All the things like meadows, streams, the earth, rainbow, flowers, the sky, the stars and the sun shine, all look him beautiful and attractive. He remains in their company and enjoys divine glory. The poet accepts that all the natural objects when he was child, but now they seem different. Alec King calls it a visible childhood that is attached to nature. Simultaneously, the poet calls it the first vision of childhood.
The other is invisible childhood. William Wordsworth calls it the other vision of childhood. Here the child becomes the father of man. Its main reason is that the child remains in the state of innocence and enjoys celestial or divine vision. Its journey to the state of man fades away the first vision. He is a grown up man, and his inclination is too much with worldly things. In him, the visible childhood is deaf and silent. When he feels the nature seems to be opaque, he becomes dejected. He hears the singing of birds in spring time; he watches young lambs leaping and jumping and the gusting of the winds, but he does not find the joy of childhood. He finds the entire earth is very happy and, around him, there is a joyful festival. His heart, too, desires to participate into it in order to play and laugh among the flowers, but all things seem different to him because he has lost the visible childhood.
In his opinion, human life is merely a sleep and a forgetting. Before the entry on the earth, his life was purer and more glorious because heaven or divine vision lies in infancy. During the childhood, his memory and magic about that place was alive, but as this childhood transferred into manhood, all magic died. He calls it the conspiracy of worldly pleasures which help to forget the glories. It is the attraction of such conspiracy that disturbs the poet. William Wordsworth looks at a six-year-old boy and imagines his life that is running to adult life. He is of the opinion that the adult life consists of worldly pleasures, festivals, weddings, sorrows and funerals. He speaks to the child like a mighty prophet and acquaints him with the lost truth. He also pursues him not to hurry towards an adult life of custom and mundane troubles.
Now, the poet turns to the philosophical point. He acknowledges that he possesses very different faculty. In his faculty, the visible childhood is alive because his memories are enriched with the joy of nature. It is always with him and issues the approach to the lost world of nature, innocence and exploration. Such vision bounces him by providing the joy of nature, and that’s why, he urges the birds to sing, and then all creatures to participate into the cheerfulness of May morning. He confesses that materialistic world has affected some parts of the glory of nature and of experience, but it has conferred a mature consciousness or philosophic mind. Such consciousness or philosophic mind makes the child the father of man.
It means that the dual vision has enabled him to love nature and natural beauty. Now He is able to discover unique thoughts from the natural things which will remain alive or with him till death. It is his memory or consciousness that connects him to childhood and to nature. Indeed, he is right because his life and work both are prominent example of it.
