His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 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. 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; 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. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief; The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,- Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity, Thou child of joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd boy! Ye blesséd creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal, your jubilee; The fulness of your bliss, I feel — I feel it all. O evil day! if I were sullen 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 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? Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: And cometh from afar; 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 And that imperial palace whence he came. Behold the child among his new-born blisses, A mourning or a funeral, And this hath now his heart, 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 Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep On whom those truths do rest Which we are toiling all our lives to find, Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! O joy! that in our embers The thought of our past years in me doth breed |