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Intimations
of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled 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 past 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 blessed 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 fullness of your bliss, I
feel -I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herselfis 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 looked 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-learned 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 a 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,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at
strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly
freight,
And custom lies 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 today
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,
Forbode not
any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts
I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one
delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway;
I
love the brooks which down their channels fret
Even
more than when I tripped 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.
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