תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

By night or day,

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!

The things which I have seen I now can Ye blesséd creatures, I have heard the

see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose;

The moon doth with delight

call

[blocks in formation]

My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

Look round her when the heavens are The fulness of your bliss, I feel — I feel

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.

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.

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;

[blocks in formation]

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.

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.

Behold the child among his new-born blisses,

A six years' darling of a pygmy 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.

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!

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

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

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 ever.

[blocks in formation]

99

[blocks in formation]

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
When all at once I saw a crowd,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
A host of golden daffodils,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!

I gazed and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought;

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude:
And then my heart with pleasure fils;
And dances with the daffodils.

[blocks in formation]

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

[blocks in formation]

A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funer
And this hath now.
And unto this he fra
Then will he fit 1
To dialogues of business
But it will not be

Ere this be throwi
And with new joy
The little actor cons
Filling from time to
stage
With all the person
That Life brings w

As if his wh
Were endless

[graphic]
[ocr errors]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« הקודםהמשך »