There was a time when meadow, grove1, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial2 light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
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 starry3 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 joyous4 song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance5 gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.
The cataracts6 blow their trumpets7 from the steep,
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng8.
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;
Thou child of joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!
Ye blessd Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee9;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss10, I feelI feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen11
While Earth herself is adorning12
This sweet May-morning;
And the children are culling13
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 look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
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;
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 infancy14!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds16 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,
And by the vision 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 she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely18 nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate19, Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
Behold15 the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid20 work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted22 by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some 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 song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife23;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons24 another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation25
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior26 百度竞价推广blance27 doth belie28
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 for ever by the eternal Mind,
Mighty29 Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths rest
Which we are toiling30 all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality32
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed, without the sense of sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thoughts where we in waiting lie;
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 inevitable33 yoke34,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness 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!
0 joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive35!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction36: not indeed
For that which is most worthy17 to be blest,
Delight and liberty, the simple creed37
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 obstinate38 questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings39 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 endeavour,
Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly40 abolish or destroy!
Hence, in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal31 sea
Which brought us hither;
Can in a moment travel thither41
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then, sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
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 so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
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 remains42 behind;
In the primal43 sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing44 thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic45 mind.
And 0, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves46,
Forebode not any severing47 of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight
To live beneath your more habitual48 sway;
I love the brooks49 which down their channels fret21
Even more than when I tripp'd 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 colouring 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