II.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose.

The moon doth with delight

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 passed away a glory from the earth.

III.

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:

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is
gay;

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-10-18. Express briefly (and in general terms) the idea contained in stanza ii.

26. No more... wrong. What is the figure of speech? (See Def. 20.)—Express the thought in plainer language.

30, 31. Land... Jollity. What is the figure of speech? (See Def. 22.)

30

40

35

And with heart of May

Doth every beast keep holiday ;-
Thou child of joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shout, thou happy

Shepherd boy!
IV.

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make, I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;"
My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,*

The fulness of your bliss I feel—I feel it all.
Oh evil day! if I were sullen

While the Earth herself is adorning

This sweet May morning,

And the children are pulling,

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 looked upon,
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?

37. Ye blessed creatures: that is, the ob- | 41. coronal, a crown or garland (as at

jects of nature, animate and in

animate, mentioned in the pre-
ceding stanza.

39. jubilee, shout of joy.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.—32. with heart of May. Vary the phraseology.

39, 41, 55. Give the etymology of “jubilee ;” “coronal;” “pansy."

44, 49. What is the grammatical construction of “herself?" Of "flowers ?" 58. is... dream? How do you justify "is" and "it" where the reference is to "the glory and the dream?"

V.

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.

59. a forgetting: that is, a forgetting of

what took place in the ante-
natal life. The doctrine of pre-
existence was held by Plato and

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-59. Our birth, etc.

Pythagoras (as well as by the seers of Egypt and India). Perhaps to every fine soul the thought comes in flashes.

The transition of thought here

is, perhaps, somewhat abrupt. There was an interval of more than two years between the writing of stanza iv. and that of stanza v.

committed to memory.

Stanza v. may be

63-66. forgetfulness... our home. Compare the poet Campbell's remark: "Children have so recently come out of the hands of their Creator, that they have not had time to lose the impress of their divine origin."

67-77. With the thought in these lines compare the exquisitely tender verses of Hood:

"I remember, I remember,

The fir-trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky.

"It was a childish ignorance,

But now 'tis little joy

To know I'm farther off from heaven

Than when I was a boy."

72-75. The youth... attended. Transpose into the prose order.

60

65

70

75

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-
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

86, 87. the child... A six years' darling. Though the idea applies to childhood in general, Words

worth had in his mind a particular child-Hartley Coleridge.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.—78-85. Express in your own words the idea in stanza vi.

78. fills her lap. What is the figure of speech? (See Def. 20.) 82, 83. homely nurse... foster-child. Explain these expressions. 89. Fretted. What is the meaning of the word as here used?

102. The little actor cons, etc. Is the language here literal or figurative?

80

85

8

95

100

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.

VIII.

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 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!

104. persons Lat. persona.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.—103. “humorous stage." From what author is this expression quoted?

107. Thou. See note to lines 86, 87.

107, 108. whose... immensity. Express the thought in your own words.

109, 110. who yet... heritage. Explain by reference to line 67.

110. thou eye. What is the figure of speech?

116. This line was omitted by the author in a later edition. It is wanted

for the rhyme's sake.

125. thy soul shall have, etc.

What is the figure of speech?

126. custom. Explain the word as here used.

120

125