Is Life So Bad?

But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Throughout "Ode" I felt hope. Wordsworth fills his lines with loss; and then, he will put a single or a few "hope" lines. For example: after stating the "Rainbow comes and goes" and "That there hath past away a glory from the earth," and "To me alone there came a thought of grief," he writes, "A timely utterance gave that thought relief,/ And again I am strong:" Wordsworth's structure really amazes me how it, with a pattern of "loss, loss, loss, hope," takes you on a trip in a life. In lines 151-155 Wordsworth reveals how our "first affections" and our "shadowy recollections" have a power. Since we have experienced some grief and loss and that those times seem prolonged (longer than the good sometimes) these recollections will "uphold" us. He says they have ". . .power to make/ Our noisy years seem moments in the being/ Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,/ To perish never;" If we have the wisdom to know these moments will come and if we give time to recollection, the loss won't be as bad, and possibly of no matter if there is an Eternal Silence.