The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight.
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it has been of yore: —
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more!
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
Waters on a starry night
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.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while ihe young Iambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief;
A timely utterance gave that thought relief.
And I again am strong.
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep:
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
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!
Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each olher make: I see
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.
Oh, evil day! if I were sullen
While the earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May morning
And the babe leaps up on his mother's
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
But there's a tree, of many one,
A single field which I have have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream.?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And Cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in out 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,
And fade into the light of common day.
Behold the child among his new-born blisses,
A six-years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of
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"
With all the persons, down to palsied age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage:
As if his whole vocation
Where endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doCh belie
Thy soul's immensity:
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage; thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind, —
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find:
Thou, over whom thy immortality
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by:
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom, on thy being's height.
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke.
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
IX.
O joy, that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benedictions : not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be bless'd —
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
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:
Black misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised!
But for those first affections.
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;
19
uphold us — cherish — and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence : truths that wake,
Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds ! sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
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 forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower?
I We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind
In the primal sympathy
Which, having been, must ever be.
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering,
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,
Think not of any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love ihe brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Tis lovely yet;
The clouds that gaiher round the setting sun
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality!
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears;
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often He too deep for tears.
Incorporated in the Victorian Web 23 February 2013