ABSTRACT
Written between 27 March 1802 and March 1804 - and first published simply as 'Ode' - the final poem in the two-volume Poems of 1807, William Wordsworth's 'Immortality Ode' has long been regarded as one of the great poems in his poetical oeuvre and indeed as a key text of Romanticism in general. Wordsworth's great 'Intimations' ode has been for so long intimately connected with Wordsworth's own autobiography, and indeed, Wordsworth's poems in general have been so consistently interpreted as documents pertaining to that autobiography, that to consider one of his larger poems as an object in itself may actually seem impertinent. Wordsworth's spiritual history is admittedly important: it is just possible that it is ultimately the important thing about Wordsworth. The music of Wordsworth's Ode is so elaborate that it untunes the timely-happy connection between heaven and nature, as between heart and nature, a connection the poet is always reestablishing.
