SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS

Hour of Splendor in the Grass, Emporia, KS

I’ve spent the better part of the past four weeks editing all the stored material stuff, documents and photos that my wife Karen and I had accumulated and held onto for the better part of our lives.  It was an emotional roller coaster at times which is why it has taken me this long to finally tackle the job.  But what better time to do this than during a fading pandemic as I am scheduled to receive my two Covid-19 vaccine shots in the next four weeks.

As I neared completion of the project which involved many trips to donate useful but unneeded objects and the casting off of literally hundreds of pounds of no longer useful paperwork, one long-dormant poem surfaced in my mind—the classic Ode of William Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality and the more recognized segment known as Splendor in the Grass.  This is the poem we hear Natalie Wood recite in the 1961 movie of the same name.

The Ode begins with recollections of the divine vision of youth:

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

the earth, and every common sight,

to me did seem

apparelled in celestial light,

the glory and the freshness of a dream.”

 

This is followed by a discussion of death, loss of innocence and even loss of the divine sensed in nature.  And as we near the end of the Ode, we see how a youth’s incomprehension of mortality allows us to see what is unseen by more worldly adults.  But the adult imagination and ability to ponder the future allows us to intimate immortality:

“Though nothing can bring back the hour

of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower:

We will grieve not, rather find

strength in what remains behind.”

 

The poem concludes that in spite of the trials and tribulations of adulthood, we can return to our understanding of youth:

“Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

to me the meanest flower that blows can give

thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”