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| THERE 1 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. | 5 |
| 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 … | |
| |
| Whither is fled the visionary gleam? | 10 |
| 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: | 15 |
| 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! | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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 … | 30 |
| |
| 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 | 35 |
| 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:— | 40 |
| 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; | 45 |
| Blank misgivings of a Creature | |
| Moving about in worlds not realised, | |
| High instincts before which our mortal Nature | |
| Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised: | |
| But for those first affections, | 50 |
| 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 | 55 |
| 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, | 60 |
| 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 | 65 |
| 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 … | |
