WORDSWORTH'S POEMS. ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD. THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The glory and the freshness of a dream. 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 ; 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. B 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, 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 other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in My heart is at your festival, 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, 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, Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; And cometh from afar : But trailing clouds of glory do we come 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, 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. |