Comparing Wordsworths Ode to Duty and Elegiac Stanzas

Comparing Wordsworths Ode to Duty and Elegiac Stanzas A past attitude is reverted to and revised in Wordsworths Ode to Duty and Elegiac Stanzas. Employing geographic metaphors, both celestial and earth-bound, the poems climb over rocky Wordsworthian terrain that details his reconciliation between past and present and implications of the future. Though vastly different stylistically†¹Ode to Duty utilizes an antiquated verse form and language, while Elegiac Stanzas is written in Wordsworths beloved language of men†¹and in the internal willfulness on the poets part to change versus reaction to external stimuli, the poems parallel in their desires for resolution of a disarrayed soul via the calming sublime power of either an†¦show more content†¦His desire to mend his ways was brought about Through no disturbance of my soul,/ Or strong compunction in me wroughtÃ…  / But in the quietness of thought (33-4, 36). The poems devotion to an abstract concept exemplifies the willful internality of the poets decision. This internal ity leads the poet to supplicate for thy control, an act that shifts the poem into the religious territory of reverence. Indeed, Wordsworth subtly raises his travel conceit from the earth to the heavens. In the quietness of thought, a time that is often reserved for prayer, he decides that Me this unchartered freedom tires;/ I feel the weight of chance-desires (37-8). The unmapped liberalism of random urges weighs him down and bounds him to the earth; the austere and personified guardian of duty, on the other hand, steps lightly between the earth and the sky: Nor know we anything so fair/ As is the smile upon thy face;/ Flowers laugh before thee on their beds/ And fragrance in thy footing treads;/ Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;/ And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong (43-8). The craving for a repose that ever is the same, a constancy that may, in the future, hold for him a blissful course, is made salient in the comparison to stars, long regarded as shapers of destiny (40, 21). The repose here means sleep, whereas in the fourth stanza reposed my trust means