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Difference(s) between text #102026 and text #26539

Go to the Instructions

1There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
2The earth, and every common sight,
3 To me did seem
4 Apparell'd in celestial light,
5The glory and the freshness of a dream.
6It is not now as it hath been of yore; --
7 Turn wheresoe'er I may,
8 By night or day,
9The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
10
11 The rainbow comes and goes,
12 And lovely is the rose;
13 The moon doth with delight
14 Look round her when the heavens are bare;
15 Waters on a starry night
16 Are beautiful and fair;
17 The sunshine is a glorious birth;
18 But yet I know, where'er I go,
19That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.
20
21Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
22 And while the young lambs bound
23 As to the tabor's sound,
24To me alone there came a thought of grief:
25A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
26 And I again am strong.
27The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; --
28No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:
29I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
30The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
31 And all the earth is gay;
32 Land and sea
33 Give themselves up to jollity,
34 And with the heart of May
35 Doth every beast keep holiday; --
36 Thou child of joy,
37Shout round me; let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd boy!
38
39Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
40 Ye to each other make; I see
41The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
42 My heart is at your festival,
43 My head hath its coronal,
44The fullness of your bliss, I feel -- I feel it all.
45 O evil day! if I were sullen
46 While Earth herself is adorning
47 This sweet May morning;
48 And the children are pulling
49 On every side,
50 In a thousand valleys far and wide,
51 Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
52And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm: --
53 I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
54 -- But there's a tree, of many, one,
55A single field which I have look'd upon,
56Both of them speak of something that is gone:
57 The pansy at my feet
58 Doth the same tale repeat:
59Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
60Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
61
62Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
63The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
64 Hath had elsewhere its setting
65 And cometh from afar;
66 Not in entire forgetfulness,
67 And not in utter nakedness,
68But trailing clouds of glory do we come
69 From God, who is our home:
70Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
71Shades of the prison-house begin to close
72 Upon the growing Boy,
73But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
74 He sees it in his joy;
75The Youth, who daily farther from the east
76 Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
77 And by the vision splendid
78 Is on his way attended;
79At length the Man perceives it die away,
80And fade into the light of common day.
81
82Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
83Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
84And, even with something of a mother's mind
85 And no unworthy aim,
86 The homely nurse doth all she can
87To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,
88 Forget the glories he hath known,
89And that imperial palace whence he came.
90
91Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
92A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
93See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
94Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
95With light upon him from his father's eyes!
96See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
97Some fragment from his dream of human life,
98Shaped by himself with newly-learn'd art;
99 A wedding or a festival,
100 A mourning or a funeral;
101 And this hath now his heart,
102 And unto this he frames his song:
103 Then will he fit his tongue
104To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
105 But it will not be long
106 Ere this be thrown aside,
107 And with new joy and pride
108The little actor cons another part;
109Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"
110With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
111That Life brings with her in her equipage;
112 As if his whole vocation
113 Were endless imitation.
114
115Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
116 Thy soul's immensity;
117Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
118Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
119That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
120Haunted for ever by the eternal Mind, --
121 Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
122 On whom those truths do rest
123Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
124In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
125Thou, over whom thy immortality
126Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
127A Presence which is not to be put by;
128 To whom the grave
129Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
130 Of day or the warm light,
131A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
132Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
133Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
134Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
135The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
136Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
137Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
138And custom lie upon thee with a weight
139Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
140
1141 O joy! that in our embers O joy! that in our embers
2142 Is something that doth live; Is something that doth live;
3143 That Nature yet remembers That Nature yet remembers
4144 What was so fugitive! What was so fugitive!
145The thought of our past years in me doth breed
146Perpetual benediction: not indeed
147For that which is most worthy to be blest,
148Delight and liberty, the simple creed
149Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
150With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: --
151 Not for these I raise
152 The song of thanks and praise;
153 But for those obstinate questionings
154 Of sense and outward things,
155 Fallings from us, vanishings;
156 Blank misgivings of a creature
157Moving about in worlds not realized,
158High instincts, before which our mortal nature
159Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
160 But for those first affections,
161 Those shadowy recollections,
162 Which, be they what they may,
163Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
164Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
165 Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
166Our noisy years seem moments in the being
167Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
168 To perish never;
169Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
170 Nor man nor boy,
171Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
172Can utterly abolish or destroy!
173 Hence, in a season of calm weather,
174 Though inland far we be,
175Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
176 Which brought us hither;
177 Can in a moment travel thither --
178And see the children sport upon the shore,
179And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
5180
6181 * * * Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
182 And let the young lambs bound
183 As to the tabor's sound!
184 We, in thought, will join your throng,
185 Ye that pipe and ye that play,
186 Ye that through your hearts to-day
187 Feel the gladness of the May!
188What though the radiance which was once so bright
189Be now for ever taken from my sight,
190 Though nothing can bring back the hour
191Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
192 We will grieve not, rather find
193 Strength in what remains behind;
194 In the primal sympathy,
195 Which having been must ever be;
196 In the soothing thoughts that spring
197 Out of human suffering;
198 In the faith that looks through death;
199In years that bring the philosophic mind.
7200
8201 The rainbow comes and goes, And, O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
9202 And lovely is the rose;Forbode not any severing of our loves!
203Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
204I only have relinquish'd one delight
205To live beneath your more habitual sway:
206I love the brooks which down their channels fret
207Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
208The innocent brightness of a new-born day
209 Is lovely yet;
210The clouds that gather round the setting sun
211Do take a sober colouring from an eye
212That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
213Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
214Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
215Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,
216To me the meanest flower that blows can give
217Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

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