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 passed away a glory from the earth, III. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, To me alone there came a thought of grief: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every Beast keep holiday ;— Thou Child of Joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy! IV. Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all. And the Children are culling In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm :- —But there's a Tree, of many, one, A single Field which I have looked upon, Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? 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 But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 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 wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: To dialogues of business, love, or strife; But it will not be long 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 Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find, Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? IX. Oh 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 Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realised, High instincts before which our mortal Nature |