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 fulness of your bliss I feel
Oh, evil day! if I were sullen While earth herself is 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,
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,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; 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, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife ? Full 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 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,
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
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 to-day 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, Forebode 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
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
THREE years she grew in sun and shower, Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;
This child I to myself will take, - She shall be mine, and I will make A lady of my own.
Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse; and with me The girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power, To kindle or restrain.
She shall be sportive as the fawn, That wild with glee across the lawn, Or up the mountain springs; And hers shall be the breathing balm,- And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.
The floating clouds their state shall lend To her, for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see Even in the motions of the storm, Grace that shall mould the maiden's form, By silent sympathy.
The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place, Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty, born of murmuring sound,. Shall pass into her face.
And vital feelings of delight Shall rear her form to stately height,
Her virgin bosom swell; Such thoughts to Lucy I will give,
While she and I together live
Here in this happy dell."
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