Intimations of Immortality

Full Title: "Ode: Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood"

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                  The child is father of the man;
                  And I could wish my days to be
                  Bound each to each by natural piety.
                       --(Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up")                  


                                   I

          THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
          The earth, and every common sight,
                    To me did seem
                  Apparelled in celestial light,
          The glory and the freshness of a dream.
          It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
                  Turn wheresoe'er I may,
                    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 past away a glory from the earth.

                                  III

          Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
              And while the young lambs 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!

                                   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 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 Earth herself is adorning,
                  This sweet May-morning,
              And the Children are culling
                  On every side,
              In a thousand valleys far and wide,
              Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
          And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:--
              I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
              --But there's a Tree, of many, one,
          A single Field which I 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?

                                   V

          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,
              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.

                                   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 six years' Darling of a pigmy size!
          See, where 'mid work of his own hand he 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,
              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
              Were endless imitation.

                                  VIII

          Thou, whose exterior semblance doth 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,
          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 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 benediction: not indeed
          For that which is most worthy to be blest--
          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;
            Blank 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;
            Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
          Our noisy years seem moments in the being
          Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
              To perish never;
          Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
              Nor Man nor Boy,
          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
              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.

                                   X

          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 for ever taken from my sight,
              Though nothing can bring back the hour
          Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
              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.

                                   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
          To live beneath your more habitual sway.
          I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
          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 colouring 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.