by Homer
On visionary minds, if in this time
Of dereliction and dismay I yet
Despair not of our nature, but retain
A more than Roman confidence, a faith
That fails not, in all sorrow my support,
The blessing of my life, the gift is yours
Ye Mountains! thine, O Nature! Thou hast fed
My lofty speculations, and in thee
For this uneasy heart of ours I find
A never-failing principle of joy 500
And purest passion.
Thou, my Friend, wast reared
In the great city mid far other scenes,
But we, by different roads, at length have gained
The self-same bourne. And from this cause to thee
I speak unapprehensive of contempt,
The insinuated scoff of coward tongues,
And all that silent language which so oft
In conversation betwixt man and man
Blots from the human countenance all trace 510
Of beauty and of love. For thou hast sought
The truth in solitude, and thou art one,
The most intense of Nature’s worshippers,
In many things my brother, chiefly here
In this my deep devotion.
Fare thee well!
Health and the quiet of a healthful mind
Attend thee! seeking oft the haunts of men
But yet more often living with thyself
And for thyself, so haply shall thy days 520
Be many and a blessing to mankind.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
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. 5
It is not now as it has 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, 10
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; 15
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.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound 20
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.
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep, — 25
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 30
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! 35
Ye blesséd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal, 40
The fulness of your bliss, I feel — I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While earth herself is adorning
This sweet May morning;
And the children are culling 45
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! 50
— But there’s a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look’d upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat: 55
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
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 60
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: 65
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; 70
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, 75
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, 80
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, 85
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, 90
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, 95
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, 100
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; 105
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 110
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 115
Which we are toiling all our lives to find;
Thou, over whom thy immortality
Broods like the day, a master o’er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave 120
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height, 125
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 130
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! 135
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, 140
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, 145
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: 150
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; 155
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, 160
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, 165
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. 170
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, 175
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 180
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, 185
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, 190
Forbode 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 195
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 200
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 205
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
My Heart Leaps Up
William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
MY heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old 5
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man:
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Two April Mornings
William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
WE walk’d along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew stopp’d, he look’d, and said
‘The will of God be done!’
A village schoolmaster was he, 5
With hair of glittering gray;
As blithe a man as you could see
On a spring holiday.
And on that morning, through the grass
And by the steaming rills 10
We travell’d merrily, to pass
A day among the hills.
‘Our work,’ said I, ‘was well begun;
Then from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun, 15
So sad a sigh has brought?’
A second time did Matthew stop;
And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply: 20
‘Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
Brings fresh into my mind
A day like this, which I have left
Full thirty years behind.
‘And just above yon slope of corn 25
Such colours, and no other,
Were in the sky that April morn
Of this the very brother.
‘With rod and line I sued the sport
Which that sweet season gave, 30
And coming to the church, stopp’d short
Beside my daughter’s grave.
‘Nine summers had she scarcely seen,
The pride of all the vale;
And then she sang: — she would have been 35
A very nightingale.
‘Six feet in earth my Emma lay;
And yet I loved her more —
For so it seem’d, — than till that day
I ne’er had loved before. 40
‘And turning from her grave, I met,
Beside the churchyard yew,
A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.
‘A basket on her head she bare; 45
Her brow was smooth and white:
To see a child so very fair,
It was a pure delight!
‘No fountain from its rocky cave
E’er tripp’d with foot so free; 50
She seem’d as happy as a wave
That dances on the sea.
‘There came from me a sigh of pain
Which I could ill confine;
I look’d at her, and look’d again: 55
And did not wish her mine!’
— Matthew is in his grave, yet now
Methinks I see him stand
As at that moment, with a bough
Of wilding in his hand. 60
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Fountain
A Conversation
William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
WE talk’d with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Matthew seventy-two.
We lay beneath a spreading oak,
5
Beside a mossy seat;
And from the turf a fountain broke
And gurgled at our feet.
‘Now, Matthew!’ said I, ‘let us match
This water’s pleasant tune 10
With some old border-song, or catch
That suits a summer’s noon.
‘Or of the church-clock and the chimes
Sing here beneath the shade
That half-mad thing of witty rhymes 15
Which you last April made!’
In silence Matthew lay, and eyed
The spring beneath the tree;
And thus the dear old man replied,
The gray-hair’d man of glee: 20
‘No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears,
How merrily it goes!
‘Twill murmur on a thousand years
And flow as now it flows.
‘And here, on this delightful day, 25
I cannot choose but think
How oft, a vigorous man, I lay
Beside this fountain’s brink.
‘My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirr’d, 30
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.
‘Thus fares it still in our decay:
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what Age takes away, 35
Than what it leaves behind.
‘The blackbird amid leafy trees,
The lark above the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will. 40
‘With Nature never do they wage
A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free:
‘But we are press’d by heavy laws; 45
And often, glad no more,
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.
‘If there be one who need bemoan
His kindred laid in earth, 50
The household hearts that were his own, —
It is the man of mirth.
‘My days, my friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,
And many love me; but by none 55
