Page images
PDF
EPUB

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,
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,

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

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

[blocks in formation]

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:
But yet I know, where'er I go,

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
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.

[blocks in formation]

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,
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.

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!
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.

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 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
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:-

[blocks in formation]

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,
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 ever-

more.

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 forever taken from my sight;
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor 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.

99

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 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,
I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
When all at once I saw a crowd,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
A host of golden daffodils,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
Along the margin of a bay :
They stretched in never-ending line
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!

I gazed and gazed-but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought;

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude:
And then my heart with pleasure fils;
And dances with the daffodils.

TO THE CUCKOO.

O BLITHE new-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee, and rejoice:

O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?

While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near.

Though babbling only to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the spring!
Even yet thou art to me

No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my school-boy days
I listened to; that cry
Which made me look a thousand ways,
In bush and tree and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen!

And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.

O blessed bird! the earth we pace

Again appears to be

An unsubstantial, fairy place
That is fit home for thee!

A MEMORY.

THREE years she grew in sun and shower;
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower

On earth was never sown :
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.

"Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse; and with me
The girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.

"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;
Nor shall she fail to see

E'en in the motions of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form
By silent sympathy.

"The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place,
Where rivulets dance their wayward
round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.

"And vital feelings of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height,

Her virgin bosom swell;

Such thoughts to Lucy I will give
While she and I together live
Here in this happy dell."

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;
The memory of what has been,
And nevermore will be.

SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT.

SHE was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

I saw her upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet a woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;

[graphic][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »