Wordsworth's Ode to be read aloud at Thatcher's funeral

Wednesday 17th April 2013 7:55 am (first posted 12th April 2013)

William Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood is to be read aloud at Margaret Thatcher’s ceremonial funeral at St Paul’s cathedral today. Wordsworth completed the Ode in 1804, at the same time as he was finishing The Prelude. It includes a number of memorable lines including “The things which I have seen I now can see no more”, “Whither is fled the visionary gleam? / Where is it now, the glory and the dream?” and “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears”.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh are to attend the former prime minister’s funeral, which is to be accompanied with full military honours.

Preparations for Thatcher’s death had been taking place for some time, including in the poetry world. On hearing the news the radical small press publisher erbacce rushed out a chapbook titled Thatcher Tributes – “no punches are pulled, no love is lost” - which it has had prepared for a year.

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Comments

<Deleted User> (4172)

Wed 17th Apr 2013 20:17

Hello Julian. I do appreciate your position on the site but if people only want a favourable reaction to their comments I suggest that they warn us all first. Blinkered and out of touch are hardly attacks and heads up arses, well I've read worse on here. It does appear that the right wing middle classes are at their bullying worst again. Point taken and I promise to sit quietly in a corner until i'm spoken to. But you're right, she's caused enough trouble as it is.

Graham Sherwood

Wed 17th Apr 2013 10:07

Laura, I would never wish to influence the way you think. Somewhat bizarrely though Thatcher gave the same freedom to union members who were too often bullied into striking by Scargill, Gormley, Red Robbo and the like.
My wife lived under shameful unionised bullying with her dad in the car making industry. I hope you can see some colour in all this and not just black and white.

Julian (Admin)

Tue 16th Apr 2013 16:34

Hi Mike
Happy for you to comment on the news item, but we would prefer you not to attack your fellow members with personal comments - blinkered, out of touch, and your final comment about placing of heads.
I know this is an emotive topic, but let's not let her mess with our site, eh?
Just a little reminder :-)
Thanks.

<Deleted User> (4172)

Tue 16th Apr 2013 14:54

Laura, well said! Some people on here are so blinkered and out of touch it's unreal. I find being labelled cold, ignorant and unfeeling just because I choose not to mourn (and neither do I celebrate)the death of an individual that I associate with so many of todays ills more than insulting, some people need to take their heads out of their arses.

Laura Taylor

Tue 16th Apr 2013 10:08

Graham - you presume too much. I prize good manners and respect above most other things and indeed they were the first things I taught my daughter. Do you think I would be like this over any other funeral/person?! Do you think other people who are reacting the same way as me would too? That's some insult there.

I am becoming quite enraged at being told what to think and how to feel about all of this by the way, by people who did not live my life, who were not subject to the humiliation, the shame, the absolute grind of existence that me, my family, and everyone around me lived through. By people who don't seem to have acknowledged any of her serious crimes against humanity, her collusion with an out-of-control, violent and fascistic police force. You can have your own thoughts on this, but you respect mine and I'll respect yours. I'll not tell you to feel the way I do, so stop telling me to feel the way you do.

She's having a service today - why can't that just be it?

Why is this amount of public money being allowed to be spent on an extra state funeral (and it IS a state funeral - missing out the word 'state' does not make it otherwise) when families are being evicted, food banks are having to be used, and the people on a lower financial rung are being demonised and punished purely for being without money?

It is obscene beyond measure, and I am incensed by it all.

Julian (Admin)

Tue 16th Apr 2013 08:34

Your point is well made, Graham. I am also from such an era. When I was little all following traffic would remain behind the cortege rather than overtake, as a mark of respect.
I mourn the passing of such an era when people had respect for others, which is sadly less a part of our society now; and much of that change in attitude is down to her promulgating the self-first, no-such-thing-as-society philosophy.
As for the funeral itself, were it a private, rather than state, affair, I would wish that she were treated like anyone else from her era, with the respect you suggest; the problem is that her funeral - to the apparent disgust of the queen - has been hijacked as a publicity stunt by members of the government. It is that to which I object. It is also foolish of them, as she was clearly a divisive figure and their insensitivy is fanning the flames of dissent.

<Deleted User> (4172)

Tue 16th Apr 2013 07:41

Graham, I doubt many of the dead that passed yourself and your father had the same devastating impact on communities and the country as what Thatcher did. Would you have removed your hats and bowed your heads if it had been Hitler, Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden? I thought not! Why do you think that all of these comments are being posted? Why do you think that in some areas her death is being celebrated? It's because she was loathed and sadly, her legacy still thrives today.

Graham Sherwood

Mon 15th Apr 2013 22:42

When I was a young lad, I remember walking along the High St in our town and seeing an approaching funeral cortege, my father stood at the kerbside (as did I) with our heads bowed. Other men took off their hats and bowed also. We didn't even know the occupant of the coffin, it was just respect and knowing how to behave.
I've been posting on here for a couple of years now and I thought that there were a lot of good eggs contributing too.
Having read some of the comments on sundry Maggie related pieces, I guess many have just not been brought up the way I was. Shame.

Tommy Carroll

Mon 15th Apr 2013 22:26

Thatchers lasting legacy: developing ways to aerate ice-cream in order to keep the bulk but reduce content-hence raising profits. Adulteration.

Julian (Admin)

Mon 15th Apr 2013 18:00

70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the author died, according to my book on copyright and IPR. Was 50 before 1996 act brought it in line with rest of Europe.
Her funeral is being hijacked by the Tory government out of desperation at their plight, in the hope that it will provide a kind of 'Falklands factor', in my view.
Labour can hardly claim too much moral high ground on this though, as her legacy informed Blair's weltanschauung, which still seems to inform the present leadership's.
What would St Francis have made of her using his material outside Number 10?
I agree wholeheartedly with Laura's observation about spending so much when we are cutting, for example, disability benefits.
I defend the right's right to its view of her, but deplore the insensitivity to those people whose views are shaped by their experiences of life under her, particularly in the blighted north. She is not Churchill.
And, should son mark even be allowed into the UK after he got his mumsie to use (abuse?) her office to solicit financial favours over dodgy goverment arms sales?

Laura Taylor

Mon 15th Apr 2013 10:32

Absolutely Isobel.

And Chris - great post there.

Another aspect to all this is the sheer audacity of the Tories lining up to attend the funeral - the very same men who kicked her arse out of No 10! The hypocrisy is out of this world - it's a whole new level.

Isobel

Sun 14th Apr 2013 19:48

Poetry and politics to one side for a moment, it's just so wrong that we should be footing the bill for the state funeral of a politician, when the rest of the country is being told to accept austerity measures. There's just no getting away from the unfairness of that.

Given the choice, I'm sure that nobody would have voted to spend 3 million on such a thing - even if they didn't despise her...

Chris Co

Sun 14th Apr 2013 16:01

One view is to see all that is great...look at Wordsworth's London. Another very different view of London at the time was provided by Blake.

Wordsworth didn't smell the shit or see the degredation - neither it seems did most of Thatcher's supporters when considering her time in office. To hear them speak of this time is to hear of a different world - one that I don't recognise.

The choice of poet seems appropriate...

John F Keane

Sun 14th Apr 2013 15:44

Did Thatcher request the poem herself? Or was it someone else?

I find the former very hard to believe. She never struck me as being anything but a total philistine, like most English lower middle-class people. Besides, wasn't her academic background in law and chemistry?

M.C. Newberry

Sat 13th Apr 2013 16:29

Epitaph for Thatcher's funeral.
If the Left cannot manage to be Right
Then the Right will always be Left.

John Darwin

Fri 12th Apr 2013 20:40

I'm struggling to express my feelings on this. The word arse comes to mind, with an exclamation mark. Ho hum...

Laura Taylor

Fri 12th Apr 2013 14:30

Mmmm interesting Frances, thanks. I know the younger Wordsworth was a radical, although he drifted somewhat in later years...

Innit Mike?!

And Anthony - fantastic haha :D

Anthony Emmerson

Fri 12th Apr 2013 13:39

Maggiemandias

I met a traveller from a once great realm
Who said: "My land was laid to waste, without a care;
One cold and ruthless woman at the helm
Preached selfishness is good, to take and not to share.”
Her statue’s wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well her passions read.
Some yet still thrive, stamped on her selfish seed,
The hands that squashed them and the hearts that bled.
And on her pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Thatcher, Queen of greed:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing of good remains. Round the decay
Of her colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The memories of despair stretch far away".

(With apologies to Shelley)

<Deleted User> (4172)

Fri 12th Apr 2013 12:08

Incredible, all this fuss for someone whose destructive, selfish legacy is still being felt today(and all at the tax payers expense)There's little wonder we are the laughing stock of the world. Enough said.

Frances Spurrier

Fri 12th Apr 2013 12:05

Laura Taylor

Fri 12th Apr 2013 11:54

I wonder what Wordsworth would make of that? And what the legalities of that are?

I would hate for one of my poems to be used for a funeral for someone I'd never known, and if I disputed their principles/politics/morals/ethics, then that feeling would only be exacerbated.

Obviously, barring a seance, we don't know what he'd think, but I do wonder about issues of copyright, stuff like that.

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