On mists in idleness-to let fair things He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, 120 A LAMENT 7. Keats CCLXXXV O World! O Life! O Time! On whose last steps I climb, Trembling at that where I had stood before; When will return the glory of your prime? No more-O never more! Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight: Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more-O never more! P. B. Shelley Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake, And cling to it; though under my wrath's night It climb the crags of life step after step, &c.' [Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, Act III, Sc. I.] Out of the day and night 'Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my heart? Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here They have departed; thou shouldst now depart! 121 My heart leaps up when I behold So was it when my life began, The Child is father of the Man: CCLXXXVI W. Wordsworth 122 ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM CCLXXXVII There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, A light is past from the revolving year, And man and woman; and what still is dear Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near: 'Tis Adonais calls! oh! hasten thither! No more let Life divide what Death can join together.' No. 121. Written in 1804. The Child is father of the Man. Compare 'The childhood shows the man As morning shows the day.' [Paradise Regained, IV, 220.] Bound each to each by natural piety. Piety is here used in its original sense, as including a reference to the feelings which the child ought to cherish towards the father. The three last lines of this poem were prefixed by Wordsworth as a motto to the following Ode. No. 122. Written in 1803-6. To me did seem Apparell'd in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature. Many times while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that time I was afraid of such processes. In later periods of life I have deplored, as we have all reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite character, and have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in the lines'Obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings,' &c. To that dream-like vividness and splendour which invest objects of sights in childhood, every one, I believe, if he could look back, could bear testimony, and I need not dwell upon it here; but having in the poem regarded it as presumptive evidence of a prior state of existence, I think it right to protest against a conclusion, which has given pain to some good and pious persons, that I meant to inculcate such a belief. It is far too shadowy a notion to be recommended to faith, as more than an element in our instincts of immortality. But let us bear in mind. The rainbow comes and goes, The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth. As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,- that though the idea is not ad- the same aspiration as regards the world of his own mind? Having to wield some of its elements when I was impelled to write this poem on the Immortality of the Soul,' I took hold of the notion of pre-existence as having sufficient foundation in humanity for authorising me to make for my purpose the best use of it I could as a poet.' [Author's note.] Doth with delight Look round her. No more shall grief of mine the Compare the first and tenth stanzas of Wordsworth's 'Yarrow Visited' (No. 93) and the following lines from Shelley's 'Stanzas written in Dejection near Naples' (quoted in note to No. 62)— 'Some might lament that I were cold, As I when this sweet day is gone Which my lost heart, too soon grown old, Insults with this untimely moan,’ I hear the echoes through the mountains throng, Give themselves up to jollity, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Ye blesséd creatures, I have heard the call The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; The fulness of your bliss, I feel-I feel it all. And the children are pulling In a thousand valleys far and wide A single field which I have look'd upon, Doth the same tale repeat: The fields of sleep. Compare the line The sleep that is among the lonely hills' quoted from Wordsworth in the note to No. 14. |