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

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!
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

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and
wood,

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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But O! how oft,

How oft, at school, with most believing

mind,

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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.
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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