II.

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 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.

III.

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.

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 ;——

Thou child of joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy

shepherd boy!

IV.

Ye blessed 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,

ODE.

My head hath its coronal

The fullness of your bliss, I feel, I feel 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;
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?

V.

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 east

Must travel, still is nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

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

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--
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!

See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted 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 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" With all the persons, down to palsied age,

That life brings with her in her equipage;

As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

ODE.

VIII.

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 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!

IX.

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

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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 evermore.

X.

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!