For ever shattered and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and
your joy,

Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?
And who commanded (and the silence
came),

Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest? Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow

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Adown enormous ravines slope amain Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,

And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!

Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the Gates of
Heaven

Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun

Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers

Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?

God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,

Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!

God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!

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Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!

And they too have a voice, yon piles of

This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,

With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film which fluttered on the grate
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling
Spirit

By its own moods interprets, everywhere
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

And makes a toy of Thought.

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Of ancient mountain, and beneath the

clouds,

Which image in their bulk both lakes and

shores

And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God 60 Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in himself Great universal Teacher! he shall mould Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eavedrops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

DEJECTION: AN ODE

[Written April 4, 1802]

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I

It were a vain endeavour,

Though I should gaze for ever

On that green light that lingers in the west: may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life whose fountains are within.

IV

O Lady! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live: Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!

Nought cared this body for wind or

weather

When Youth and I lived in 't together.
Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;

O the joys, that came down showerlike,

Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,
Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? Ah woful Ere, Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!

O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
'Tis known, that Thou and I were one,
I'll think it but a fond conceit
It cannot be that Thou art gone!
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd: -
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
What strange disguise hast now put on,
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size:
But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
Life is but thought: so think I will
That Youth and I are house-mates still.

Dew-drops are the gems of morning,
But the tears of mournful eve!
Where no hope is, life's a warning
That only serves to make us grieve,
When we are old:
That only serves to make us grieve
With oft and tedious taking-leave,
Like some poor nigh-related guest,
That may not rudely be dismist;
Yet hath outstayed his welcome while,
And tells the jest without the smile.

WORK WITHOUT HOPE

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