Both of them speak of something that is gone:

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 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;

And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will be 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 for ever 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 night
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 blessedness 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:
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;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to 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,
Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

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 for ever 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.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight,

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I loved 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 too often lie too deep for tears.

EXTRACT FROM "THE RECONCILER."

Dora Greenwell.

Our dreams are reconciled,
Since Thou didst come to turn them all to Truth;
The World, the Heart, are dreamers in their youth
Of visions beautiful, and strange and wild;

And Thou, our Life's Interpreter, dost still
At once make clear these visions and fulfil;
Each dim, sweet Orphic rhyme,

Each mythic tale sublime

Of strength to save, of sweetness to subdue,
Each morning dream the few,

Wisdom's first lovers told, if read in Thee comes true.

Thou, O Friend

From heaven, that madest this our heart Thine own,

Dost pierce the broken language of its moan —
Thou dost not scorn our needs, but satisfy!
Each yearning deep and wide,

Each claim is justified;

Our young illusions fail not, though they die
Within the brightness of Thy Rising, kissed
To happy death, like early clouds that lie
About the gates of Dawn, -
a golden mist
Paling to blissful white, through rose and amethyst.

The World that puts Thee by,
That opens not to greet Thee with Thy train,
That sendeth after Thee the sullen cry,
"We will not have Thee over us to reign;"
Itself doth testify through searchings vain
Of Thee and of its need, and for the good

It will not, of some base similitude

Takes up a taunting witness, till its mood,
Grown fierce o'er failing hopes, doth rend and tear
Its own illusions grown too thin and bare

To wrap it longer; for within the gate
Where all must pass, a veiled and hooded Fate,

A dark Chimera, coiled and tangled lies,

And he who answers not its question dies,

Still changing form and speech, but with the same
Vexed riddles, Gordian-twisted, bringing shame
Upon the nations that with eager cry
Hail each new solver of the mystery;
Yet he, of these the best,

Bold guesser, hath but prest

Most nigh to Thee, our noisy plaudits wrong;
True Champion, that hast wrought

Our help of old, and brought

Meat from this eater, sweetness from this strong.

O Bearer of the key

That shuts and opens with a sound so sweet
Its turning in the wards is melody,
All things we move among are incomplete
And vain until we fashion them in Thee!