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;
relief,

A timely utterance gave that thought

And I again am strong;

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 cataracts blow their trumpets from The youth, who daily farther from the east

My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal.

The fullness of your bliss, I feel, I feel it all.

Oh evil day, if I were sullen
While earth herself is adorning,
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 its 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,

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,
Aud fade into the light of common day.

VI.

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.

VII.

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,

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,

Both of them speak of something that is gone; And this now hath his heart,

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?

IV.

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;

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,

Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom, on thy being's height,
Why,with such earnest pains dost thou pro-
voke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earth-
ly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

IX.

O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!

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.

X.

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 that was once so
bright

Be now forever taken from my sight,

The thought of our past years in me doth Though nothing can bring back the hour

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;

Not for these I raise

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,

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flow

And O, ye fountains, meadows, hills, and
groves,

Forbode 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;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to The innocent brightness of a new-born day

make

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

Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from the eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortal-
ity;

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.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

The summer glory withers from the scene,
Scared by the solemn spell; behold them fly,

That his strength might endure for a span The godlike images that seemed so fair!

And in the crowd of joys-upon thy throne The world seems what it is-a Grave! and Thou sitt'st in state, and hardenest into stone. Love