Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

“Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” consists of 11 stanzas of varied length, amounting to 203 lines, plus the three lines of the epigraph. The poem has no uniform meter (rhythmic structure) nor rhyme pattern, but several types of poetic meter and rhyme appear in various parts of the poem. Some lines are iambic pentameters, which consist of five iambs: metric units containing two syllables of which the second carries the stress (as in the word “be-yond”). Other lines are shorter, but largely maintain the iambic rhythm. Lines 1-4 present a strong example:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

       The earth, and every common sight,

                       To me did seem

               Apparelled in celestial light

The first line is in iambic pentameter, with five iambic feet (metric units) where the stress falls on the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth syllable. The second and fourth lines are iambic tetrameters, with four iambic feet, while the third line is an iambic dimeter, with only two iambic feet. The rhyme pattern in this passage is ABAB (the first line rhymes with the third and the second with the fourth), but this changes and varies throughout the poem.