From its first publication, what is now known as the Immortality Odehas been praised for the magnificence of its verse and disparaged for itspaucity of meaning - the 'immortality' of the subtitle unsubstantiated, and the'recollections' insubstantial. Yet Wordsworth's idea of immortality has clearprecedents in the seventeenth century, and recollections of childhood areTraherne's starting point for the recovery of a lost vision comparable toWordsworth's. Via the power of the imagination, or reason, they believed theycould experience a renewed vision that both termed variously Paradise, orinfinity, or immortality. Graham Davidson traces the origins of Wordsworth's poetic impetus tohis resistance to the Cartesian division between mind and nature, firstadumbrated by the Cambridge Platonists. If reunited, Paradise was regained, butthis personal trajectory was tempered by a deep sympathy for the woes of mortallife. Davidson explores the consequent dialogue through some of Wordsworth'sbest-known poems, at the heart of which is the Ode. In the last section,he demonstrates how Wordsworth's publishing history led the Victorians andmodernists to misinterpret his work; if one considers Eliot's Four Quartetsas odes, facing several of the same problems as did Wordsworth, there is someirony in Eliot's dismissal of the Immortality Ode as 'verbiage'.