On every side, In a thousand vallies 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 look'd upon, 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: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close But He beholds the light, and whence it flows, 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, 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. 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: 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, Filling from time to time his " humourous stage" That Life brings with her in her Equipage; Were endless imitation. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! 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, To whom the grave Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight A place of thought where we in waiting lie; Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? O joy that in our embers |