CXXIX. Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight: Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more-Oh, never more! 10 P. B. Shelley. CCCXXXVI. THE TROSACHS. There's not a nook within this solemn Pass, Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone, Wither'd at eve. From scenes of art which chase 5 Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass Untouch'd, unbreathed upon :-Thrice happy quest, The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast W. Wordsworth. 10 COCXXXVIIL CCE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD. There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, Apparelld 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 past 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: And I again am strong. The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep ;- I hear the echoes through the mountains throng, The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every beast keep holiday ;— Thou child of joy Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy herd-boy! 35 Ye blesséd 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 Earth herself is adorning 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 :— A single field which I have look'd upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone : 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; And cometh from afar; 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 At length the Man perceives it die away, Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 And even with something of a mother's mind The homely nurse doth all she can Forget the glories he hath known, 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, And unto this he frames his song To dialogues of business, love, or strife; Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage' The little actor cons another part; 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 Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep 110 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 115 Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave, 120 Thou little child, yet glorious in the might Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 125 Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, O joy that in our embers 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; 130 135 140 But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, 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 endeavour, 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, 150 155 160 |