FROM WORDSWORTH TO LONGFELLOW. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. [1770-1850.] INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD. THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, The glory and the freshness of a dream. By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can Ye blesséd creatures, I have heard the see no more. The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose; The moon doth with delight call My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal, Look round her when the heavens are The fulness of your bliss, I feel I feel bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth: That there hath passed away a glory from the earth. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound To me alone there came a thought of grief; A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong. 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 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, At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. 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. Behold the child among his new-born blisses, A six years' darling of a pygmy size! lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly learned art, A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral, And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife; But it will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, With all the persons, down to palsied age, Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage; thou eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted forever by the eternal mind, Mighty prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths do rest Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; 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 b'essedness 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! 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 benediction: not indeed Delight and liberty, the simple creed Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence: truths that wake, To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, Nor man nor boy, Hence, in a season of calm weather, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea more. Then, sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young lambs bound We, in thought, will join your throng, Be now forever taken from my sight; We will grieve not, rather find In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. 99 And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves! Even more than when I tripped lightly as they; The innocent brightness of a new-born day Is lovely yet; The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. THE DAFFODILS. That floats on high o'er vales and hills, Continuous as the stars that shine The waves beside them danced, but they I gazed and gazed-but little thought For oft, when on my couch I lie TO THE CUCKOO. O BLITHE new-comer! I have heard, O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, While I am lying on the grass Though babbling only to the vale Thrice welcome, darling of the spring! No bird, but an invisible thing, The same whom in my school-boy days To seek thee did I often rove And I can listen to thee yet; O blessed bird! the earth we pace Again appears to be An unsubstantial, fairy place A MEMORY. THREE years she grew in sun and shower; On earth was never sown : "Myself will to my darling be In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, "She shall be sportive as the fawn, That wild with glee across the lawn Or up the mountain springs; And hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers the silence and the calm, Of mute insensate things. "The floating clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend; E'en in the motions of the storm "The stars of midnight shall be dear And beauty born of murmuring sound "And vital feelings of delight Her virgin bosom swell; Such thoughts to Lucy I will give Thus Nature spake. The work was done― How soon my Lucy's race was run! She died, and left to me This heath, this calm and quiet scene; SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT. SHE was a phantom of delight To be a moment's ornament; I saw her upon nearer view, |