Ode
Intimations
of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
by William Wordsworth
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I |
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There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, |
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The earth, and every common sight, |
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To me did seem |
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Apparelled in celestial light, |
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The glory and the freshness of a dream. |
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It is not now as it hath been of yore;- |
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Turn whereso'er I may, |
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By night or day, |
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
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II |
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The rainbow comes and goes, |
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And lovely is the rose, |
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The Moon doth with delight |
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Look round her when the heavens are bare; |
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Waters on a starry night |
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Are beautiful and fair; |
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The sunshine is a glorious birth; |
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But yet I know, where'er I go, |
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
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III |
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Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, |
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And while the young lambs bound |
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As to the tabor's sound, |
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To me alone there came a thought of grief: |
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A timely utterance gave that thought relief, |
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And I again am strong: |
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The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; |
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No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; |
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I hear the echoes through the mountains throng, |
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The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, |
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And all the earth is gay; |
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Land and sea |
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Give themselves up to jollity, |
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And with the heart of May |
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Doth every beast keep holiday;- |
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Thou Child of Joy, |
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy!
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IV |
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Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call |
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Ye to each other make; I see |
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The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; |
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My heart is at your festival, |
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My head hath its coronal, |
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The fullness of your bliss, I feel - I feel it all. |
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O evil day! if I were sullen |
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While Earth herself is adorning, |
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This sweet May-morning, |
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And the Children are culling |
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On every side, |
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In a thousand valleys far and wide, |
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Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, |
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And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:- |
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I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! |
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- But there's a Tree, of many, one, |
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A single field which I have looked upon, |
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Both of them speak of something that is gone: |
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The pansy at my feet |
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Doth the same tale repeat: |
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Whither is fled the visionary gleam? |
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
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V |
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Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: |
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The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, |
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Hath had elsewhere its setting, |
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And cometh from afar: |
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Not in entire forgetfulness, |
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And not in utter nakedness, |
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But trailing clouds of glory do we come |
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From God, who is our home: |
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Heaven lies about us in our infancy! |
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Shades of the prison-house begin to close |
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Upon the growing Boy, |
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But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, |
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He sees it in his joy; |
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The Youth, who daily farther from the east |
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Must travel, still
is Nature's Priest, |
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And by the vision splendid |
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Is on his way attended; |
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At length the Man perceives it die away, |
And fade into the light of common day.
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VI |
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Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; |
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Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind; |
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And, even with something of a mother's mind, |
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And no unworthy aim, |
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The
homely nurse doth all she can |
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To make her Foster-child, her inmate Man, |
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Forget
the glories he hath known, |
And that imperial palace whence he came.
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VII |
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Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, |
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A six years' darling of pigmy size! |
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See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, |
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Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, |
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With light upon him from his father's eyes! |
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See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, |
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Some fragment from his dream of human life, |
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Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art; |
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A
wedding or a festival, |
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A
mourning or a funeral; |
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And this hath now his heart, |
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And
unto this he frames his song: |
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Then will he fit his tongue |
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To dialogues of business, love, or strife; |
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But it will not be long |
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Ere this be thrown aside, |
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And with new joy and pride |
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The little actor cons another part; |
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Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage' |
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With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, |
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That Life brings with her in her equipage; |
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As if his whole vocation |
Were endless imitation.
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VIII |
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Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie |
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Thy Soul's immensity; |
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Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep |
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Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, |
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That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, |
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Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,- |
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Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! |
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On whom those truths do rest, |
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Which we are toiling all our lives to find, |
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In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; |
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Thou, over whom thy Immortality |
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Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave, |
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A presence which is not to be put by; |
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To whom the grave |
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Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight |
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Of day or the warm light, |
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A place of thought where we in waiting lie; |
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Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might |
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Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, |
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Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke |
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The years to bring the inevitable yoke, |
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Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? |
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Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, |
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And custom lie upon thee with a weight, |
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
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IX |
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O joy! that in our embers |
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Is something that doth live, |
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That nature yet remembers |
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What was so fugitive! |
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The thought of our past years in me doth breed |
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Perpetual benediction: not indeed |
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For that which is most worthy to be blest - |
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Delight and liberty, the simple creed |
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Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, |
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With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:- |
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Not for these I raise |
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The song of thanks and praise; |
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But for those obstinate questionings |
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Of sense and outward things, |
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Fallings from us, vanishings; |
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Blank misgivings of a Creature |
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Moving about in worlds not realised, |
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High instincts before which our mortal Nature |
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Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: |
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But for those first affections, |
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Those shadowy recollections, |
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Which, be they what they may, |
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Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, |
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Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; |
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Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make |
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Our noisy years seem moments in the being |
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Of the eternal Silence; truths that wake, |
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To perish never: |
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Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, |
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Nor Man nor Boy, |
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Nor all that is at enmity with joy, |
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Can utterly abolish or destroy! |
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Hence in a season of
calm weather |
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Though inland far we be, |
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Our souls have sight of that immortal sea |
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Which brought us hither, |
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Can in a moment travel
thither, |
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And see the children sport upon the shore, |
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
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X |
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Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! |
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And let the young lambs bound |
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As to the tabor's sound! |
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We in thought will join your throng, |
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Ye that pipe and ye that play, |
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Ye that through your hearts to-day, |
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Feel the gladness of the May! |
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What though the radiance which was once so bright |
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Be now for ever taken from my sight, |
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Though nothing can bring
back the hour |
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Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; |
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We will grieve not, rather find |
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Strength in what remains behind; |
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In the primal sympathy |
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Which having been must ever be; |
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In the soothing thoughts that spring |
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Out of human suffering; |
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In the faith that looks through death, |
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
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XI |
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And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, |
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Forebode not any severing of our loves! |
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Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; |
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I only have relinquished one delight |
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To live beneath your more habitual sway. |
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I love the brooks which down their channels fret, |
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Even more than when I tripped lightly as they; |
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The innocent brightness of a new-born Day |
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Is lovely yet; |
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The clouds that gather round the setting sun |
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Do take a sober colouring from an eye |
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That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; |
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Another race hath been, and other palms are won. |
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Thanks to the human heart by which we live, |
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Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, |
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To me the meanest flower that blows can give |
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
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William Wordsworth | Classic
Poems |
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[ Composed Upon Westminster Bridge September 3 ] [ Daffodils ] [ The Prelude ] [ Lucy ] [ Intimations of immortality ] [ The Solitary Reaper ] [ The world is too much with us ] [ My heart leaps up when I behold ] [ Milton ] [ Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg ] |
