ODE. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD. The Child is Father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. I. THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, The glory and the freshness of a dream. By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. II. The Rainbow comes and goes, The Moon doth with delight Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; That there hath past away a glory from the earth. III. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, 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; Thou Child of Joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd Boy! IV. Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ; My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss I feel-I feel it all. And the Children are culling On every side In a thousand valleys far and wide, 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? V. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 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 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, VI. 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. VII. Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, 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. |