Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart : THE RIVER DUDDON AFTER-THOUGHT I THOUGHT of Thee, my partner and my guide, Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide; Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour; And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know. MOST SWEET IT IS MOST sweet it is with unuplifted eyes The Mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews IT IS A BEAUTEOUS EVENING It is a beauteous evening, calm and free; Breathless with adoration; the broad sun The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea: And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder-everlastingly. Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING I HEARD a thousand blended notes In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts To her fair works did Nature link And much it grieved my heart to think Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, The budding twigs spread out their fan And I must think, do all I can, If this belief from heaven be sent, THE RAINBOW My heart leaps up when I behold So was it when my life began, So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man: And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY From "Recollections of Early Childhood" THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, Apparell'd in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. By night or day, The rainbow comes and goes, The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Are beautiful and fair; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, As to the tabor's sound, 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 Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd boy! Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call 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 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 look'd upon, 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; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, 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. 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, |