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 fees it in his joy;

The youth, who daily farther from the east
Muft travel, ftill is Nature's priest,
And by the vifion splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings fhe 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 fofter-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 fix years' darling of a pigmy fize!

See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by fallies of his mother's kiffes,

With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See at his feet fome little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral;

And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his fong:
Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown afide,

And with new joy and pride

The little actor cons another part;

Filling from time to time his "humorous stage

With all the perfons, down to palfied age,
That life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation

Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior femblance doth belie
Thy foul's immensity;

Thou best philofopher, who yet doft keep

Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,

That, deaf and filent, read'ft the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,-

Mighty Prophet! Seer bleft!

On whom those truths do reft,

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
Thou, over whom thy immortality
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
A prefence 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 doft thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy bleffedness at strife?
Full foon thy foul shall have her earthly freight,
And cuftom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as froft, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers

Is fomething that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was fo fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benedictions: 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 ftill fluttering in his breast:

Not for these I raise

The fong of thanks and praise;
But for those obftinate questionings
Of fenfe and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank mifgivings 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 feeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal filence: truths that wake,
To perish never;

Which neither liftleffness, nor mad endeavour,
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 fouls have fight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither;

Can in a moment travel thither,

And fee the children fport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then fing, ye birds, fing, fing a joyous fong!
And let the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's found!

We, in thought, will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once fo bright
Be now for ever taken from my fight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal fympathy

Which, having been, must ever be,
In the foothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering,

In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philofophic mind.

And, oh ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,
Think not of any fevering of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight,