IV. Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My head hath its coronal. The fulness of your bliss, I feel-I feel it all. This sweet May-morning, And the Children are culling On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, -But there's a Tree, of many, one, Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? V. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come 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 VI. 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. VII. Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his Then will he fit his tongue song: To dialogues of business, love, or strife; 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" Were endless imitation. VIII. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep On whom those truths do rest, Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, IX. O joy! that in our embers The thought of our past years in me doth breed, For that which is most worthy to be blest; 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 Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realized, 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 Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, X. Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! 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 splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; Which having been must ever be; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. XI. 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 |