Splendour in the Grass
What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass,
of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
Commentary
William Wordsworth’s ‘Splendour in the Grass’ is the poem we hear in the 1961 movie by the same name. Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty starred and Wood was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Deanie, Beatty’s girlfriend.
The poem is from Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, which begins with the majestic:
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.
The entire ode is well worth reading.
My first introduction to Splendour in the Grass was on a day when I was home from school, sick with the flu. I passed the day watching movies on the television. Though I was only about eleven or twelve years old, the poem really resonated. And who can forget Natalie Wood struggling to read it in her English class, then hearing her recite it again, this time much wiser, at the end of the movie?
Kassie
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Anustup Datta · 14 February 2003
The poem more or less summarises Wordsworth’s poetic philosophy. He once described poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquility” - his best poetry has the poet-philosopher lying on his couch “in vacant or in pensive mood”, remembering a flash of beauty in Nature or Man. As his “inward eye” diminished in power with age, his poetry too lost its power. Unlike other poets - such as a Browning, for instance - his power of observation did not mature with age, nor take on deeper and subtler overtones mellowed by experience and understanding. Ultimately, the fount of stored memory and captured emotion ran dry without anything to replenish it with. As a famous critic observed, Wordsworth “lived on capital” - profligately.
I have always thought that Wordsworth at his best was the greatest poetic Impressionist - his eye captures the fleeting moment in the same dazzling interplay of light as Claude Monet’s watercolours. And you know what Cezanne said about Monet - “Only an eye, but my God what an eye!” Like Monet, Wordsworth remained the truest to the absolute fidelity of emotional impression.
Wordsworth himself realizes what he has lost through the passage of time, and his reaffirmation of faith here sounds hollow and forced, as though he were trying to convince himself that all is not gone. But try as he might, a touch of nostalgia about the glory that was, of the splendours of the past, creeps in. The grass remains splendid, but the keen-eyed young man who had felt it earlier is no more.
Regards
Tups
John Horan · 13 September 2007
In 1961 when I first heard this poem in the movie Splendour in the Grass I did not realize how pervasive that opening stanza would be throughout my life. That I dwelt on just those words surrounding splendour and glory whenever a tragic moment visited, either for me or belonging to others, did not affect me to search out the remainder of the poem for more understanding. After remembering some of those moments I called to mind the line about “finding strength in what we leave behind”; forty-six years later I realize that it is not a strength you find but a signal to stop following your grief. I just finished reading, for the first time, the entire poem. I am understanding what pursuing a graceful life has meant.
ANITA OCONNOR · 7 November 2007
I must have been watching at the same time as Kassie as her recollection mirrors mine identically. I remember so vividly Natalie Wood reading in the classroom - (I think) during the film and then struggling to read it again at the end It has always stuck in my mind and am glad to find out where it originated. Many thanks
Kevin Straw · 4 February 2008
I dislike this poem. I simply do not believe any of it. As an atheist I like Donne’s and Herbert’s and Hopkins’ religious poetry, I understand them, but I don’t like this poem. I rather resent “We will not greave…” - a rather impertinent assumption that we all share these strange metaphysical beliefs. In fact, as a 64 year old I can vouchsafe that life becomes more wonderful than ever it was as a child - the focus changes from nursery lamp, to something that seems at time cosmologically illuminating - one looks at life good and bad and the sum of it is good.
Kevin Straw