Your personal hopes and dreams are always changing and burden you by their shifting goals. Duty, on the other hand, is constant and gives the peaceful rest of knowing what is required of you.
When you hear the word “duty” what do you think of? A soldier? A parent? Someone doing something they don’t really want to do?
I recently purchased an anthology of English romantic poetry and read a poem by William Wordsworth called “Ode to Duty”. The intriguing title immediately attracted my attention. You can read the whole poem here, and I recommend you do so. But a couple lines stood out to me that discussed the relation of duty to desire. I think they are significant enough to discuss and reflect on here.
Me this uncharted freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance-desires:
My hopes no more must change their name
I long for a repose that ever is the same
—“Ode to Duty,” William Wordsworth
What the Quote Means
Contrasting Duty and Desire
In these lines, Wordsworth is presenting a contrast between desire and duty. He uses profoundly vivid images to do this. He calls his own changing desires “uncharted freedom” and “chance desires.” He describes his own hopes as something almost chaotic and untamed. They change. There is a wildness to their freedom.
And these changing desires are not insignificant: Wordsworth says he feels the weight of them. Weight has a connotation of something burdensome. Think if you are carrying a heavy backpack: it’s weight drags you down and burdens you. Depending on how “weighty” something is, you might use up a lot of your energy to carry it. Wordsworth uses this imagery to describe your desires.
Then, Wordsworth presents duty. Unlike personal desires, duty is described as something constant and unchanging. Personal desires are chaotic and liquid, but duty is ordered and solid. And this unchanging nature of duty brings “repose” or rest. This is in contrast with the weight and burden of changing desires. Wordsworth’s point is simple:
Your personal hopes and dreams are always changing and burden you by their shifting goals. Duty, on the other hand, is constant and gives the peaceful rest of knowing what is required of you.
Why it is Important
Duty Sets in Order Our Shifting Personal Desires
I think one reason “Ode to Duty” stuck out to me is how accurately it paints our modern culture. You and I live in a world that elevates personal desire above everything. And it is exhausting. The wisdom of the age says being true to yourself and following your dreams brings freedom. But how often the opposite is true! If you live solely for your own desires, Wordsworth says, you are in bondage to something chaotic and always changing.
Ask yourself these questions:
How often have your own personal goals or plans changed?
When was the last time you fulfilled some dream or goal of yours? How happy did it really make you?
Have you ever received something you really wanted, but after receiving it, realized it wasn’t what you thought it was?
The point here is you often do not really know what you want. You think you do, but you can want the wrong things. Or end up meeting a goal that ends up disappointing you. Or, to Wordsworth’s point, you might wake up today with a completely new set of ideas and goals than you did yesterday.
If you live based on your own changing feelings, dreams, and desires, you are setting yourself up for a chaotic life.
So how does duty help? Duty gives you a set of responsibilities and expectations apart from your own dreams and desires. Put another way, desire is internal and duty is external. Your desires shift almost daily and change as you change, but duty gives you expectations that are long-lasting.
I interpret what Wordsworth says in these lines as duty frees you from subjecting yourself to constantly changing desires. It brings a rest of knowing what is expected of you and knowing that those expectations don’t change easily. I don’t think Wordsworth’s point is to never have desires. That would remove an important part of what it means to be human. But personal desires and goals must be submitted to an external, rigid standard it you are to have a good life.
