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 armI 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?
5. 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 comèth 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.
6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy soul's immensity!

Thou best philosopher, who yět 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!— 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 ö’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,

9.

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!
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 breastNot 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 shōre, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 10. 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 splendor 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.
11. 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 relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped 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 coloring 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 meanèst flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

SECTION XXXIV.

I.

175. THE POET.

Hom the Poet! His are the flaming thoughts that HOW

OW glorious, above all earthly glory, are the faculty and

pierce the vail of heaven-his are the feelings, which on the wings of rapture sweep over the abyss of ages. The star of his being is a splendor of the world.

The

2. The Poet's state and attributes are half divine. breezes of gladness are the heralds of his approach; the glimpse of his coming is as the flash of the dawn. The hues of Conquest flush his brow: the anger of triumph is in his eyes. The secret of Creation is with him; the mystery of the Immortal is among his treasures. The doom of unending sovereignty is upon his nature.

3. The meditations of his mind are Angels, and their issuing forth is with the strength of eternity. The tălisman' of his speech is the scepter of the free. The decrees of a dominion whose sway is over spirits, and whose continuance is to everlasting, go out from befōre him; and that ethereäl essence, which is the untamable in man-which is the liberty of the Infinite within the bondage of life-is obedient to them. His phrases are the forms of Power: his syllables are agencies of Joy.

4. With men in his sympathies, that he may be above them in his influence, his nature is the jewel-clasp that binds Humanity to Heaven. It mediates between the earthly and celestial: in the vigor of his production, divinity becomes substantial; in the sublimity of his apprehensions, the material loses itself into spirit. It is his to drag forth the eternal from our mortal form of being-to tear the Infinite into our bounden state of action.

5. What conqueror has troops like his ?-the spirit-forces of Language-those subtle slaves of mind, those impetuous masters of the Passions; whose mysterious substance who can comprehend-whose mighty operation what can com'bat? Evolved, none knowèth how, within the curtained chambers of existence

1 Talisman, (tål ́iz mån), something as preservation from sickness, informed by magical skill, to which jury, &c.; that which produces re wonderful effects were ascribed, such markable effects.