Life and Existence

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, But trailing clouds of glory do we come Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, But trailing clouds of glory do we come Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

The music in my heart I bore Long after it was heard no more.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore— The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year; And worship’st at the Temple’s inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not.

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration.

And mighty poets in their misery dead.

Sweet childish days, that were as long As twenty days are now.

Sweet childish days, that were as long As twenty days are now.

I thought of Chatterton, 4 the marvelous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride; Of him 5 who walked in glory and in joy Following his plow, along the mountainside: By our own spirits are we deified: We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

My heart leaps up when I behold So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, The child is father of the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. 3

My heart leaps up when I behold So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, The child is father of the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. 3

My heart leaps up when I behold So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, The child is father of the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. 3

The harvest of a quiet eye.

A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, An intellectual All-in-all!

One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother’s grave?

She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love: 2 A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! —Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!

A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.

A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.

Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak A lasting inspiration, sanctified By reason, blest by faith: what we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how; Instruct them how the mind of man becomes A thousand times more beautiful than the earth On which he dwells.

Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak A lasting inspiration, sanctified By reason, blest by faith: what we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how; Instruct them how the mind of man becomes A thousand times more beautiful than the earth On which he dwells.

One great society alone on earth: The noble Living and the noble Dead.