| Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2352.html
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, |
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| The earth, and every common sight, |
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| To me did seem |
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| Apparell’d in celestial light, |
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| The glory and the freshness of a dream. |
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| It is not now as it hath been of yore;— |
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| Turn wheresoe’er I may, |
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| By night or day, |
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| The things which I have seen I now can see no more. |
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| The rainbow comes and goes, |
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| And lovely is the rose; |
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| The moon doth with delight |
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| Look round her when the heavens are bare; |
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| Waters on a starry night |
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| Are beautiful and fair; |
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| The sunshine is a glorious birth; |
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| But yet I know, where’er I go, |
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| That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth. |
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| Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, |
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| And while the young lambs bound |
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| As to the tabor’s sound, |
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| To me alone there came a thought of grief: |
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| A timely utterance gave that thought relief, |
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| And I again am strong: |
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| The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; |
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| No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; |
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| I hear the echoes through the mountains throng, |
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| The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, |
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| And all the earth is gay; |
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| Land and sea |
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| Give themselves up to jollity, |
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| And with the heart of May |
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| Doth every beast keep holiday;— |
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| Thou Child of Joy, |
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| Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy |
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| Shepherd-boy! |
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| Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call |
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| Ye to each other make; I see |
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| The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; |
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| My heart is at your festival, |
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| My head hath its coronal, |
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| The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all. |
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| O evil day! if I were sullen |
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| While Earth herself is adorning, |
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| This sweet May-morning, |
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| And the children are culling |
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| On every side, |
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| In a thousand valleys far and wide, |
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| Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, |
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| And the babe leaps up on his mother’s arm:— |
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| I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! |
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| —But there’s a tree, of many, one, |
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| A single field which I have look’d upon, |
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| Both of them speak of something that is gone: |
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| The pansy at my feet |
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| Doth the same tale repeat: |
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| Whither is fled the visionary gleam? |
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| Where is it now, the glory and the dream? |
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| Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: |
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| The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, |
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| Hath had elsewhere its setting, |
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| And cometh from afar: |
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| Not in entire forgetfulness, |
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| And not in utter nakedness, |
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| But trailing clouds of glory do we come |
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| From God, who is our home: |
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| Heaven lies about us in our infancy! |
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| Shades of the prison-house begin to close |
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| Upon the growing Boy, |
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| But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, |
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| He sees it in his joy; |
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| The Youth, who daily farther from the east |
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| Must travel, still is Nature’s priest, |
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| And by the vision splendid |
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| Is on his way attended; |
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| At length the Man perceives it die away, |
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| And fade into the light of common day. |
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| Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; |
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| Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, |
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| And, even with something of a mother’s mind, |
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| And no unworthy aim, |
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| The homely nurse doth all she can |
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| To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man, |
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| Forget the glories he hath known, |
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| And that imperial palace whence he came. |
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| Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, |
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| A six years’ darling of a pigmy size! |
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| See, where ‘mid work of his own hand he lies, |
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| Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses, |
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| With light upon him from his father’s eyes! |
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| See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, |
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| Some fragment from his dream of human life, |
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| Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art; |
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| A wedding or a festival, |
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| A mourning or a funeral; |
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| And this hath now his heart, |
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| And unto this he frames his song: |
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| Then will he fit his tongue |
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| To dialogues of business, love, or strife; |
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| But it will not be long |
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| Ere this be thrown aside, |
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| And with new joy and pride |
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| The little actor cons another part; |
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| Filling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’ |
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| With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, |
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| That Life brings with her in her equipage; |
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| As if his whole vocation |
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| Were endless imitation. |
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| Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie |
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| Thy soul’s immensity; |
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| Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep |
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| Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, |
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| That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep, |
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| Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,— |
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| Mighty prophet! Seer blest! |
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| On whom those truths do rest, |
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| Which we are toiling all our lives to find, |
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| In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; |
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| Thou, over whom thy Immortality |
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| Broods like the Day, a master o’er a slave, |
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| A presence which is not to be put by; |
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| To whom the grave |
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| Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight |
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| Of day or the warm light, |
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| A place of thought where we in waiting lie; |
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| Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might |
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| Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height, |
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| Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke |
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| The years to bring the inevitable yoke, |
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| Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? |
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| Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, |
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| And custom lie upon thee with a weight, |
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| Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! |
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| O joy! that in our embers |
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| Is something that doth live, |
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| That nature yet remembers |
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| What was so fugitive! |
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| The thought of our past years in me doth breed |
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| Perpetual benediction: not indeed |
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| For that which is most worthy to be blest— |
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| Delight and liberty, the simple creed |
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| Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, |
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| With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:— |
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| Not for these I raise |
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| The song of thanks and praise; |
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| But for those obstinate questionings |
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| Of sense and outward things, |
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| Fallings from us, vanishings; |
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| Blank misgivings of a Creature |
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| Moving about in worlds not realized, |
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| High instincts before which our mortal Nature |
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| Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: |
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| But for those first affections, |
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| Those shadowy recollections, |
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| Which, be they what they may, |
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| Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, |
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| Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; |
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| Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make |
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| Our noisy years seem moments in the being |
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| Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, |
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| To perish never: |
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| Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, |
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| Nor Man nor Boy, |
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| Nor all that is at enmity with joy, |
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| Can utterly abolish or destroy! |
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| Hence in a season of calm weather |
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| Though inland far we be, |
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| Our souls have sight of that immortal sea |
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| Which brought us hither, |
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| Can in a moment travel thither, |
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| And see the children sport upon the shore, |
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| And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. |
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| Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! |
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| And let the young lambs bound |
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| As to the tabor’s sound! |
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| We in thought will join your throng, |
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| Ye that pipe and ye that play, |
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| Ye that through your hearts to-day |
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| Feel the gladness of the May! |
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| What though the radiance which was once so bright |
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| Be now for ever taken from my sight, |
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| Though nothing can bring back the hour |
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| Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; |
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| We will grieve not, rather find |
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| Strength in what remains behind; |
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| In the primal sympathy |
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| Which having been must ever be; |
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| In the soothing thoughts that spring |
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| Out of human suffering; |
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| In the faith that looks through death, |
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| In years that bring the philosophic mind. |
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| And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, |
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| Forebode not any severing of our loves! |
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| Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; |
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| I only have relinquish’d one delight |
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| To live beneath your more habitual sway. |
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| I love the brooks which down their channels fret, |
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| Even more than when I tripp’d lightly as they; |
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| The innocent brightness of a new-born Day |
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| Is lovely yet; |
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| The clouds that gather round the setting sun |
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| Do take a sober colouring from an eye |
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| That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality; |
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| Another race hath been, and other palms are won. |
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| Thanks to the human heart by which we live, |
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| Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, |
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| To me the meanest flower that blows can give |
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| Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. |
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Me and Kris…he’s my brother.
Bentley
Doodle
Thats Taylor with the long hair.
I made Kris a four layer, fruit basket cake for his birthday. He loves sour candies and I wanted to incorporate some of his favorites into the cake. So besides the layers of strawberries, bananas and kiwi is the raspberries and sweet and sour candies. I had fun making it and he had fun eating it. I did have a piece yesterday and another today, but I felt like I really had to…so I wouldn’t offend the baker…hehehe.
