POEMS OF RELIGION. 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 Apparell'd in celestial light, 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; 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. 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; And all the earth is gay; Give themselves up to jollity, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 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. While the Earth herself is adorning, And the Children are culling In a thousand valleys far and wide, Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: And cometh from afar; 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 ; The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, With light upon him from his father's eyes! 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; 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" Were endless imitation. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!' Which we are toiling all our lives to find, Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 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 For that which is most worthy to be blest; With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:- 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 realized, 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; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Hence in a season of calm weather Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! As to the tabor's sound! We in thought will join your throng, Ye that through your hearts to-day What though the radiance which was once so bright Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower Strength in what remains behind; Which having been must ever be ; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the Brooks, which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripp'd 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. |