romantic-era themes

I've not read Wordsworth before tonight, but "Ode on Intimations of Immortality" reminded me distinctly of William Blake's viewpoint on the innocence and spirituality of children, and how society begins from day one of infancy to train up children into 'adult life.'

In line 91 the speaker notes a child playing with some mock 'plan or chart' of an event of importance, like a funeral or wedding. He (speaker) observes that as children, we often feel a rush to obtain the maturity and responsibilities and freedoms of adulthood, but fervently questions this desire. Children have access to an honesty and joy that seems to be lost with the coming-of-age, and adulthood consists of merely acting out what others have done before you (As if his whole vocation /Were endless imitation. Lines 107-108).

The speaker feels serious moments of these losses of "visionary gleam" and the passing "away a glory from the earth," but he resolves at the end of the poem that he can retain the spirituality of infancy through memories and the beauty of nature. Suffering and faith breed a wisdom and new philosophy with which to look at the world and value its loveliness; the tenderness of the human heart allows us new spiritual moments in place of the ones we lost with childhood.