For ever shattered and the same for ever? Unceasing thunder and eternal foam? Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest? Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Adown enormous ravines slope amain - 50 Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge! Motionless torrents! silent cataracts! 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! 60 Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings-on of life, By its own moods interprets, everywhere And makes a toy of Thought. 20 But O! how oft, How oft, at school, with most believing mind, And would we aught behold, of higher And haply by abstruse research to steal 50 worth, Than that inanimate cold world allowed To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the Earth And from the soul itself must there be sent A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, Of all sweet sounds the life and element! Nought cared this body for wind or weather When Youth and I lived in 't together. O the joys, that came down showerlike, Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty, Ere I was old? Ah woful Ere, 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! Dew-drops are the gems of morning, WORK WITHOUT HOPE 20 30 40 |