By Dr Oliver Tearle

'I Recollect, I Remember' is, along with 'The Song of the Shirt', Thomas Hood's best-loved poem. Although much of the balance of his work is not now much read or remembered, 'I Remember, I Remember' has a special identify in countless readers' hearts. Although its meaning is fairly straightforward, information technology'southward worth probing the language of Hood's poem a little deeper, as closer analysis reveals why this poem is held in such high regard.

I Recall, I Remember

I recall, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morning;
He never came a wink likewise soon,
Nor brought too long a 24-hour interval,
Simply now, I often wish the night
Had borne my jiff away!

I remember, I remember,
The roses, red and white,
The vi'lets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of calorie-free!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother fix
The laburnum on his altogether,—
The tree is living all the same!

I remember, I recall,
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then,
That is so heavy at present,
And summertime pools could inappreciably cool
The fever on my brow!

I remember, I think,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the heaven:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis picayune joy
To know I'1000 farther off from heav'n
Than when I was a boy.

'I Think, I Remember': summary

'I Call back, I Remember': the 'I remember' is repeated, peradventure, in addicted blahs, as if nosotros should hear, when we read it, a faint sigh in the poet'south voice as he recalls his babyhood years. Let us take a closer look at the poem, stanza by stanza:

I recall, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The lilliputian window where the sun
Came peeping in at morning time;
He never came a wink likewise presently,
Nor brought as well long a twenty-four hours,
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!

In summary, having recalled his childhood sleeping accommodation with its picayune window where the sunlight shone in every morning, the starting time stanza takes a darker turn, with Hood revealing that he now sometimes wishes he had died before attaining machismo, the implication being that nothing in his life since then has matched his childhood joy.

I remember, I call back,
The roses, cerise and white,
The vi'lets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of lite!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother fix
The laburnum on his birthday,—
The tree is living however!

The second stanza sees Hood recalling the many flowers he remembers from his childhood days, and the laburnum tree which is still standing all these years later.

I remember, I remember,
Where I was used to swing,
And idea the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then,
That is then heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow!

The tertiary stanza focuses on Hood'south recollections of playing on a swing, and the way he moved through the air in a low-cal and carefree manner.

And 'light' is the word. 1000. G. Chesterton once said that angels tin walk on air because they take themselves lightly. So do children, focused on having fun and playing as they are.

The implication is that, since those carefree childhood days, Hood's body and soul accept become weighed down by diverse things (cares? worries? sins?) which did non trouble him as a boy.

I recall, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to remember their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a kittenish ignorance,
Simply now 'tis little joy
To know I'1000 farther off from heav'n
Than when I was a boy.

And in the concluding stanza, this is confirmed. Hood recalls how he used to recollect the alpine fir trees were near touching heaven at their tops. At present he'southward older but non necessarily wiser: he knows that the fir trees aren't touching heaven in the sky, only he misses his babyhood ignorance and feels 'farther off from heav'north' now than 'when I was a male child'.

Something has been gained – practical real-world knowledge – just information technology has come up at the cost of the innocence which fabricated him more than godly and, thus, closer to heaven.

'I Recollect, I Retrieve': assay

Of grade, this is a Christian idea: it was the Tree of Knowledge, after all, that God forbade Adam and Eve to consume from in the Garden of Eden. Simply in many nations and many cultures and traditions, ignorance and innocence are held upward equally virtues. Socrates, in ancient Greece, was considered past the (divine) Delphic Oracle to be the wisest human in Athens because he knew how little he actually knew.

Confucius and others also warn us not to get too cocky and start thinking we know information technology all, merely because we know more. 'I Remember, I Retrieve' is a sentimental but eloquent expression of the same idea.

Information technology'southward a Romantic notion, of grade, but we run into this exaltation of childhood innocence in earlier poesy, such as Henry Vaughan'south seventeenth-century poem 'The Retreat'. Simply in the final analysis, it was Hood who captures the sense of growing older just non necessarily wiser possibly better even than Vaughan did.

The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the writer of, amid others,The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers' Journey Through Curiosities of History  andThe Great State of war, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Verse form.