| THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, | |
| The earth, and every common sight, | |
| To me did seem | |
| Apparell'd in celestial light, | |
| The glory and the freshness of a dream. | |
| It is not now as it hath been of yore;— | |
| Turn wheresoe'er I may, | |
| By night or day, | |
| The things which I have seen I now can see no more. | |
|
| The rainbow comes and goes, | |
| And lovely is the rose; | |
| The moon doth with delight | |
| Look round her when the heavens are bare; | |
| Waters on a starry night | |
| Are beautiful and fair; | |
| The sunshine is a glorious birth; | |
| But yet I know, where'er I go, | |
| That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth. | |
|
| Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, | |
| And while the young lambs bound | |
| As to the tabor's sound, | |
| To me alone there came a thought of grief: | |
| A timely utterance gave that thought relief, | |
| And I again am strong: | |
| The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; | |
| No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; | |
| I hear the echoes through the mountains throng, | |
| The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, | |
| And all the earth is gay; | |
| Land and sea | |
| Give themselves up to jollity, | |
| And with the heart of May | |
| Doth every beast keep holiday;— | |
| Thou Child of Joy, | |
| Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy | |
| Shepherd-boy! | |
|
| Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call | |
| Ye to each other make; I see | |
| The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; | |
| My heart is at your festival, | |
| My head hath its coronal, | |
| The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all. | |
| O evil day! if I were sullen | |
| While Earth herself is adorning, | |
| This sweet May-morning, | |
| And the children are culling | |
| On every side, | |
| In a thousand valleys far and wide, | |
| Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, | |
| And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:— | |
| I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! | |
| —But there's a tree, of many, one, | |
| A single field which I have look'd upon, | |
| Both of them speak of something that is gone: | |
| The pansy at my feet | |
| Doth the same tale repeat: | |
| Whither is fled the visionary gleam? | |
| Where is it now, the glory and the dream? | |
|
| Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: | |
| The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, | |
| Hath had elsewhere its setting, | |
| And cometh from afar: | |
| Not in entire forgetfulness, | |
| And not in utter nakedness, | |
| But trailing clouds of glory do we come | |
| From God, who is our home: | |
| Heaven lies about us in our infancy! | |
| Shades of the prison-house begin to close | |
| Upon the growing Boy, | |
| But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, | |
| He sees it in his joy; | |
| The Youth, who daily farther from the east | |
| Must travel, still is Nature's priest, | |
| And by the vision splendid | |
| Is on his way attended; | |
| At length the Man perceives it die away, | |
| And fade into the light of common day. | |
|
| Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; | |
| Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, | |
| And, even with something of a mother's mind, | |
| And no unworthy aim, | |
| The homely nurse doth all she can | |
| To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man, | |
| Forget the glories he hath known, | |
| And that imperial palace whence he came. | |
|
| Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, | |
| A six years' darling of a pigmy size! | |
| See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, | |
| Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, | |
| With light upon him from his father's eyes! | |
| See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, | |
| Some fragment from his dream of human life, | |
| Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art; | |
| A wedding or a festival, | |
| A mourning or a funeral; | |
| And this hath now his heart, | |
| And unto this he frames his song: | |
| Then will he fit his tongue | |
| To dialogues of business, love, or strife; | |
| But it will not be long | |
| Ere this be thrown aside, | |
| And with new joy and pride | |
| The little actor cons another part; | |
| Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage' | |
| With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, | |
| That Life brings with her in her equipage; | |
| As if his whole vocation | |
| Were endless imitation. | |
|
| Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie | |
| Thy soul's immensity; |
|
| Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep | |
| Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, | |
| That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, | |
| Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,— | |
| Mighty prophet! Seer blest! |
|
| On whom those truths do rest, | |
| Which we are toiling all our lives to find, | |
| In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; | |
| Thou, over whom thy Immortality | |
| Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave, |
|
| A presence which is not to be put by; | |
| To whom the grave | |
| Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight | |
| Of day or the warm light, | |
| A place of thought where we in waiting lie; |
|
| Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might | |
| Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, | |
| Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke | |
| The years to bring the inevitable yoke, | |
| Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? |
|
| Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, | |
| And custom lie upon thee with a weight, | |
| Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! | |
|
| O joy! that in our embers | |
| Is something that doth live, | |
| That nature yet remembers | |
| What was so fugitive! | |
| The thought of our past years in me doth breed | |
| Perpetual benediction: not indeed | |
| For that which is most worthy to be blest— |
|
| Delight and liberty, the simple creed | |
| Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, | |
| With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:— | |
| Not for these I raise | |
| The song of thanks and praise; |
|
| But for those obstinate questionings | |
| Of sense and outward things, | |
| Fallings from us, vanishings; | |
| Blank misgivings of a Creature | |
| Moving about in worlds not realized, |
|
| High instincts before which our mortal Nature | |
| Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: | |
| But for those first affections, | |
| Those shadowy recollections, | |
| Which, be they what they may, | |
| Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, | |
| Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; | |
| Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make | |
| Our noisy years seem moments in the being | |
| Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, |
|
| To perish never: | |
| Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, | |
| Nor Man nor Boy, | |
| Nor all that is at enmity with joy, | |
| Can utterly abolish or destroy! |
|
| Hence in a season of calm weather | |
| Though inland far we be, | |
| Our souls have sight of that immortal sea | |
| Which brought us hither, | |
| Can in a moment travel thither, |
|
| And see the children sport upon the shore, | |
| And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. | |
|
| Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! | |
| And let the young lambs bound | |
| As to the tabor's sound! |
|
| We in thought will join your throng, | |
| Ye that pipe and ye that play, | |
| Ye that through your hearts to-day | |
| Feel the gladness of the May! | |
| What though the radiance which was once so bright |
|
| Be now for ever taken from my sight, | |
| Though nothing can bring back the hour | |
| Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; | |
| We will grieve not, rather find | |
| Strength in what remains behind; |
|
| In the primal sympathy | |
| Which having been must ever be; | |
| In the soothing thoughts that spring | |
| Out of human suffering; | |
| In the faith that looks through death, |
|
| In years that bring the philosophic mind. | |
|
| And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, | |
| Forebode not any severing of our loves! | |
| Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; | |
| I only have relinquish'd one delight |
|
| To live beneath your more habitual sway. | |
| I love the brooks which down their channels fret, | |
| Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they; | |
| The innocent brightness of a new-born Day | |
| Is lovely yet; | |
| The clouds that gather round the setting sun | |
| Do take a sober colouring from an eye | |
| That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; | |
| Another race hath been, and other palms are won. | |
| Thanks to the human heart by which we live, | |
| Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, | |
| To me the meanest flower that blows can give | |
| Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. |
