THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,The earth, and every common sight,To me did seemApparell'd in celestial light,The glory and the freshness of a dream.5It 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,10And lovely is the rose;The moon doth with delightLook round her when the heavens are bare;Waters on a starry nightAre beautiful and fair;15The 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 bound20As 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;25No 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 sea30Give themselves up to jollity,And with the heart of MayDoth every beast keep holiday;Thou Child of Joy,Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy35Shepherd-boy!Ye blessd creatures, I have heard the callYe to each other make; I seeThe heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;My heart is at your festival,40My head hath its coronal,The fulness of your bliss, I feelI feel it all.O evil day! if I were sullenWhile Earth herself is adorning,This sweet May-morning,45And the children are cullingOn 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:50I 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 feet55Doth 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,60Hath had elsewhere its setting,And cometh from afar:Not in entire forgetfulness,And not in utter nakedness,But trailing clouds of glory do we come65From God, who is our home:Heaven lies about us in our infancy!Shades of the prison-house begin to closeUpon the growing Boy,But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,70He sees it in his joy;The Youth, who daily farther from the eastMust travel, still is Nature's priest,And by the vision splendidIs on his way attended;75At 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,80And no unworthy aim,The homely nurse doth all she canTo make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,Forget the glories he hath known,And that imperial palace whence he came.85Behold 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!90See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,Some fragment from his dream of human life,Shaped by himself with newly-learnd art;A wedding or a festival,A mourning or a funeral;95And this hath now his heart,And unto this he frames his song:Then will he fit his tongueTo dialogues of business, love, or strife;But it will not be long100Ere this be thrown aside,And with new joy and prideThe little actor cons another part;Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,105That Life brings with her in her equipage;As if his whole vocationWere endless imitation.Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belieThy soul's immensity;110Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keepThy 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!115On 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 ImmortalityBroods like the Day, a master o'er a slave,120A presence which is not to be put by;To whom the graveIs but a lonely bed without the sense or sightOf day or the warm light,A place of thought where we in waiting lie;125Thou little Child, yet glorious in the mightOf heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,Why with such earnest pains dost thou provokeThe years to bring the inevitable yoke,Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?130Full 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 embersIs something that doth live,135That nature yet remembersWhat was so fugitive!The thought of our past years in me doth breedPerpetual benediction: not indeedFor that which is most worthy to be blest140Delight and liberty, the simple creedOf childhood, whether busy or at rest,With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:Not for these I raiseThe song of thanks and praise;145But for those obstinate questioningsOf sense and outward things,Fallings from us, vanishings;Blank misgivings of a CreatureMoving about in worlds not realized,150High instincts before which our mortal NatureDid tremble like a guilty thing surprised:But for those first affections,Those shadowy recollections,Which, be they what they may,155Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;Uphold us, cherish, and have power to makeOur noisy years seem moments in the beingOf the eternal Silence: truths that wake,160To 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!165Hence in a season of calm weatherThough inland far we be,Our souls have sight of that immortal seaWhich brought us hither,Can in a moment travel thither,170And 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 boundAs to the tabor's sound!175We in thought will join your throng,Ye that pipe and ye that play,Ye that through your hearts to-dayFeel the gladness of the May!What though the radiance which was once so bright180Be now for ever taken from my sight,Though nothing can bring back the hourOf splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;We will grieve not, rather findStrength in what remains behind;185In the primal sympathyWhich having been must ever be;In the soothing thoughts that springOut of human suffering;In the faith that looks through death,190In 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 delight195To 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 DayIs lovely yet;200The clouds that gather round the setting sunDo take a sober colouring from an eyeThat 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,205Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,To me the meanest flower that blows can giveThoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

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536. Ode. Intimations of Immortality. William Wordsworth ...