ODE. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD. "The Child is Father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety." I. THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, To me did seem Apparelled 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! II. The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose,- The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare ; 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 passed away a glory from the earth. 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 Shepherdboy! IV. Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see 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 pulling On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, -But there's a Tree, of many, one, A single Field which I have looked upon, Doth the same tale repeat: 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! But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, The Youth, who daily farther from the east 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, VII. Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years' darling of a pigmy size! |