The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose;

The moon doth with delight

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;

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,

And with the heart of May Doth every beast keep holiday;Thon 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 your jubilee;

My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

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,

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.

it all.

O evil day! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning,

This sweet May morning,

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;

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

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 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 b'essedness 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 ever-

99

And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight,
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love 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 do often lie too deep for

tears.

THE DAFFODILS.

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
A host of golden daffodils,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!

I gazed and gazed-but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought;
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude:
And then my heart with pleasure fills;
And dances with the daffodils.

44780B

TO THE CUCKOO.

O BLITHE new-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee, and rejoice:

O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?

While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near.

Though babbling only to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the spring!
Even yet thou art to me

No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my school-boy days
I listened to; that cry
Which made me look a thousand ways,
In bush and tree and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen!

And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.

O blessed bird! the earth we pace

Again appears to be

An unsubstantial, fairy place
That is fit home for thee!

A MEMORY.

THREE years she grew in sun and shower;
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown:
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.

"Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse; and with me
The girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.

"She shall be sportive as the fawn, That wild with glee across the lawn

Or up the mountain springs; And hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers the silence and the calm, Of mute insensate things.

"The floating clouds their state shall lend

To her; for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see

E'en in the motions of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form
By silent sympathy.

"The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place, Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.

"And vital feelings of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height,

Her virgin bosom swell;
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give
While she and I together live

Here in this happy dell."

Thus Nature spake. The work was doneHow soon my Lucy's race was run!

She died, and left to me

This heath, this calm and quiet scene; The memory of what has been,

And nevermore will be.

SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT.

SHE was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

I saw her upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet a woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;