CCLXXXVII ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD THERE HERE 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. 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, As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep, No more shall grief of mine the season wrong: Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every beast keep holiday; Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; The heavens laugh with you in I see My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal, your jubilee ; The fulness of your bliss, I feel — I feel it all. While Earth herself is adorning This sweet May morning; And the children are pulling 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 :- 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: 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; And cometh from afar ; Not in entire forgetfulness And not in utter nakedness But trailing clouds of glory do we come Heaven lies about us in our infancy! But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, The youth, who daily farther from the east Is on his way attended; At length the man perceives it die away, 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, See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: To dialogues of business, love, or strife; 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' Were endless imitation. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep On whom those truths do rest Which we are toiling all our lives to find; Thou, over whom thy immortality Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave, A presence which is not to be put by ; 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, Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, The thought of our past years in me doth breed For that which is most worthy to be blest, 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 To perish never; |