Longer Poems I Like

23. Lines from 'Ode to Immortality'

William Wordsworth

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,    
To me did seem    
Apparell'd in celestial 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 starry night    
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;    
But yet I know, where'er I go,    
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.
.
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;
At length the Man perceives it die away,    
And fade into the light of common day.    
.
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 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 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.
.
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 remains behind;   
In the primal sympathy    
Which having been must ever be;    
In the soothing thoughts that spring    
Out of human suffering;    
In the faith that looks through death,   
In years that bring the philosophic mind.    

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 relinquish'd one delight   
To live beneath your more habitual sway.    
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
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.