THE POET'S INVOCATION. eeps record of the trophies won from thee; 125 what we are. In lone and silent hours, hen night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, ke an inspired and desperate alchemist king his very life on some dark hope, ve I mixed awful talk and asking looks th my most innocent love; until strange tears, Sting with those breathless kisses, made magic as compels the charmèd night render up thy charge. And, though ne'er yet hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, gh from incommunicable dream, twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, me mysterious and deserted fane) thy breath, Great Parent; that my strain modulate with murmurs of the air, motions of the forests and the sea, voice of living beings, and woven hymns night and day, and the deep heart of man. P. B. Shelley. 120 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; Not in entire forgetfulness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come 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 newborn blisses, See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, 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; Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 121 122 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. O joy! that in our embers That Nature yet remembers 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 High instincts, before which our mortal nature 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 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 Can in a moment travel thither— |