ODE. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDH001 The Child is Father of the Man; See page 73 1. THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. 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. 2. The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose, The Moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare, Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; That there hath past away a glory from the earth. 3. 4. Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel- I feel it all. Oh 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, And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:- 5. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: But trailing clouds of glory do we come But He beholds the light, and whence it flows, The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid At length the Man perceives it die away, 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, And this hath now his heart, 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" As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation. 8. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep 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; Thon, over whom thy Immortality Brods 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? 9. O joy that in our embers Is something that doth live, The thought of our past years in me doth breed For that which is most worthy to be blest The song of thanks and praise; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence in a season of calm weather Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Can in a moment travel thither, 10. Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, What though the radiance which was once so bright * See "THE EXCURSION," Book IV. "Alas! the endowment of Immortal Power," &c., [ani. Note 5 of Notes to "THE EXCURSION."-H. R.] Though nothing can bring back the hour Which having been must ever be; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. 11. And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, I only have relinquished one delight I love the Brooks which down their channels fret, The Clouds that gather round the setting sun 1803-6 NOTES. [See also the passage in "THE EXCURSION," Book IX: to one whose authority is almost without appeal in all * questions relating to the influence of external things upon the pure human soul. Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise, And if it were possible for us to recollect all the un- 66 * * * Etenim qui velit acutius indagare causa propense in antiqua sæcula voluntatis, mirum ni con jectura incidat aliquando in commentum illud Pytha There was never yet the child of any promise (so far as the theoretic faculties are concerned) but awaked to the sense of beauty with the first gleam of reason; and I suppose there are few, among those who love Nature otherwise than by profession and at second-hand, who look not back to their youngest and least learned days as those of the most intense, super-gore, docentis, animarum nostrarum non tum fieri stitious, insatiable, and beatific perception of her splendours. And the bitter decline of this glorious feeling, though many note it not, partly owing to the cares and weight of manhood, which leave them not the time nor the liberty to look for their lost treasure, and partly to the human and divine affections which are appointed to take its place, yet has formed the subject, not indeed of lamentation, but of holy thankfulness for the witness it bears to the immortal origin and end of our nature, initium, cum in hoc mundo nascimur: immo ex ignota quadam regione venire eas, in sua quamque corpora neque tam penitus Lethæo potu imbui, quin permanet quasi quidam anteactæ ætatis sapor; hunc autem exc tari identidem, et nescio, quo sensu percipi, tacito qu dem illo et obscuro, sed percipi tamen. Atque bac ferme sententia extat summi hac memoria Poeta nobilissimum carmen; nempe non aliam ob causam tangi pueritiæ recordationem exquisita illa ac pervagata alcedine, quam propter debilem quendam prioris ævi Deaque proprioris sensum. Quamvis autem hanc opinionem vix ferat divinæ philosophiæ ratio, fatemur tamen eam eatenus ad verum accedere, qua sanctum aliquod et grave tribuit memoriæ et caritati puerilium annorum. Nosmet certe infantes Dovimus quam prope tetigerit Divina benignitas: quis porro scit, an omnis illa temporis anteacti dulcedo babeat quandam significationem Illius Præsentiæ?” KERLE;"Prælectiones De Poetica Vi Medica," p. 788, Pral. xxxix. The following passages from the writings of a sacred poet of the 17th century-Henry Vaughan - have an interest as touching the same subject to which the imagnative meditations of this Ode are devoted: "CORRUPTION. Sure, it was so. Man in those early days He shin'd a little, and by those weak rays, He saw Heaven o'er his head, and knew whence He came condemned hither, etc., p. 61. CHILDEHOOD. I cannot reach it; and my striving eye Dazles at it, as at eternity. THE PRELUDE; OR, GROWTH OF A POET'S MIND. AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEM. ADVERTISEMENT. THE following Poem was commenced in the beginning of the year 1799, and completed in the summer of 1805. The design and occasion of the work are described by the Author in his Preface to the EXCURSION, first published in 1814, where he thus speaks: "Several years ago, when the Author retired to his native mountains with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary work that might live, it was a reasonable thing that he should take a review of his own mind, and examine how far Nature and Education had qualified him for such an employment. "As subsidiary to this preparation, he undertook to record, in verse, the origin and progress of his own powers, as far as he was acquainted with them. The First Book of the First Part of the Ru still remains in manuscript; but the Third Part only planned. The materials of which it would ha been formed have, however, been incorporated, for t most part, in the Author's other Publications, writ subsequently to the EXCURSION. The Friend, to whom the present Poem is addresse was the late SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, who w resident in Malta, for the restoration of his healt when the greater part of it was composed. Mr. Coleridge read a considerable portion of th Poem while he was abroad; and his feelings, on hear it recited by the Author (after his return to his on country) are recorded in nis Verses, addressed to M Wordsworth, which will be found in the "Sibyllin Leaves," p. 197, ed. 1817, or "Poetical Works, S. T. Coleridge," Vol. I., p. 206. RYDAL MOUNT, July 13th, 1850.* [*In connecting "THE PRELUDE" with the Author "Poetical Works," it is proper to add that it was pub lished as a posthumous poem. William Wordsworth di at Rydal Mount, on Tuesday the 23d of April, 1850: of the 7th of the same month he had completed his 80th vess Coleridge's poem, referred to in the above advertisemen: is here inserted for the convenience of the reader, and as fit introduction to "THE PRELUDE."- H. R.] "That work, addressed to a dear friend, most distinguished for his knowledge and genius, and to whom the author's intellect is deeply indebted, has been long finished; and the result of the investigation which gave rise to it, was a determination to compose a philosophical Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society, and to be entitled the Recluse;' as having for its principal subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement. "The preparatory Poem is biographical, and conducts the history of the Author's mind to the point when he was emboldened to hope that his faculties were sufficiently matured for entering upon the arduous labour which he had proposed to himself; and the two works have the same kind of relation to each other, if he may so express himself, as the Ante-chapel has to the body of a Gothic Church. Continuing this allusion, he may be permitted to add, that his minor pieces, which have been long before the public, when they shall be properly arranged, will be Composed on the Night after his recitation of a Poem on the found by the attentive reader to have such connection with the main work as may give them claim to be likened to the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ordinarily included in those edifices." Such was the Author's language in the year 1814. It will thence be seen, that the present poem was intended to be introductory to the RECLUSE, and that the RECLUSE, if completed, would have consisted of Three Parts. Of these, the Second Part alone, viz., the EXCURSION, was finished, and given to the world by the Author. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Growth of an Individua! Mind. FRIEND of the Wise! and Teacher of the Good! |