Principal Shairp says: "'The Ode on Immortality' marks the highest limit which the tide of poetic inspiration has reached in England within this century, or indeed since the days of Milton."
The idea of the pre-existence of the soul had already been treated by Henry Vaughan in "Silex Scintillans" (1655).
"Happy those infant days, when I
Shined in my angel-infancy!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first Love,
And looking back at that short space
Could see a glimpse of his bright face."
Shelley, in "A Lament," hints at the same thought:
"O world! O life! O time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before,
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more—oh, never more!
"Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight;
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more—oh, never more!"
[1.] The child is father, etc. These lines are from a short poem by Wordsworth, entitled "My Heart leaps up":
"My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety."
Compare with Milton's lines in 'Paradise Regained,' Bk. IV:
"The childhood shows the man
As morning shows the day."