Rosicrucian Beacon Magazine - 2013-03 - AMORC

y Colin Palmer
hen William Wordsworth wrote the
ode, “Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood,” he could
never have known that he was writing it for
me. If he had known, he would have said
more about “the glories he hath known” and he might have
been more specific about that line, “Heaven lies about us
in our infancy.”
Somewhere in my teens I stumbled upon, or was
guided to, this poem and I knew immediately the things
he was speaking about. And if I remember rightly I said a
prayer that hoped fervently that this man I was beginning
to be would never “perceive it die away, and fade into the
light of common day.” Of all my prayers, this one has been
most kindly and very obviously answered, time and again.
I wouldn’t have it otherwise. What happens to someone
whose perception in certain areas is frozen or had stagnated
at the age of five or eight or ten Can they grow Must they
then enter the prison to arrive at a maturity which would
allow them to “Forget the glories he hath known, and that
imperial palace whence he came” Must our birth become
“a sleep and a forgetting”
For me, the answer to my prayer has been that I was
allowed to retain many of the glories that a child can see,
and so to enjoy the wonder of it all. I didn’t mature to the
point of forgetting the glory of sunlight flashing upon water,
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The Rosicrucian Beacon -- March 2013