A Romantic Diversion

Now that sounds potentially naughty, doesn't it?

For some reason, the Romantics (not the new wave band) were well represented on the radio yesterday. I listened to an early-morning program that discussed Lyrical Ballads' emergence from a cultural shift. Then I heard Garrison Keillor reciting some Wordsworth later in the day. I admit, Wordsworth is my least favorite Romantic, and he is one of my least favorite poets--I find his glorification of nature and man a bit cloying at times. Even so, listening to the discussion and to the recitation, put me in mind of this:

from "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" (l. 58-76)

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

(1807)

"But trailing clouds of glory do we come"--such a beautiful, evocative line.

A curious aside: The excellent film about Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, titled Control, featured Curtis's character reciting Wordsworth's "My Heart Leaps Up." Is there something in the zeitgeist?