Evil, like a rolling stone upon a mountain-top, He knew, who healed our wounds, we quickly should be fain Our old hurts to forget, so let the scars remain. When will the din of earth grate harshly on our ears? When we have once heard plain the music of the spheres. Why win we not at once what we in prayer require ? That we may learn great things as greatly to desire. The tasks, the joys of earth, the same in heaven will be; Only the little brook has widened to a sea. Who hunt this world's delight too late their hunting rue, When it a lion proves, the hunter to pursue. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD. — Wordsworth. I. THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, To me did seem The glory and the freshness of a dream. Turn wheresoe'er I By night or day, may, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 316 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. II. The rainbow comes and goes, The moon doth with delight Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; That there hath passed away a glory from the earth. III. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, To me alone there came a thought of grief: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep, Give themselves up to jollity, Doth every beast keep holiday;- Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy IV. Ye blessed 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. And the children are culling On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, And he babe leaps up on his mother's arm: Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? V. Qur birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: And cometh from afar : Not in entire forgetfulness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come 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, 318 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. And by the vision splendid At length the man perceives it die away, 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, See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, 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; 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 VIII. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep On whom those truths do rest, Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave, A Thou little child, yet glorious in the might |