I.

The Child is father1of the Man;And I could wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,The earth, and every common sight,To me did seemApparelled2in 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.

The rainbow comes and goes,And lovely is the rose;The moon doth with delightLook round her when the heavens are bare;Waters on a starry nightAre 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 boundAs to the tabor's3sound,To me alone there came a thought of grief:A timely utterance gave that thought relief,And I again am strong.The cataracts4blow their trumpets from the steep;No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;I hear the echoes5through the mountains throng;The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,6And all the earth is gay;Land and seaGive themselves up to jollity,7And with the heart of May8Doth every beast keep holiday.Thou child of joy,Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd-boy!

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the callYe to each other make; I seeThe heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;My heart is at your festival.My head hath its coronal,9The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.Oh evil day if I were sullenWhile Earth herself is adorningThis sweet May morning,And the children are cullingOn every side,In a thousand valleys far and wide,Fresh flowers, while the sun shines warm,And the babe leaps up10on his mother's arm:I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!—But there's a tree,11of many, one,A single field which I have looked upon,Both of them speak of something that is gone:The pansy12at my feetDoth the same tale repeat.Whither is fled the visionary gleam?Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep13and 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 comeFrom God, who is our home.Heaven lies about us in our infancy!Shades of the prison-house begin to closeUpon 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 EastMust travel, still is nature's priest,And by the vision splendidIs 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 canTo make her foster-child, her inmate man,Forget the glories he hath known,And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the child14among his new-born blisses,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,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 tongueTo dialogues of business, love, or strife:But it will not be longEre this be thrown aside,And with new joy and prideThe little actor cons another part,Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'15With all the persons, down to palsied age,That Life brings with her in her equipage,As if his whole vocationWere endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belieThy soul's immensity;Thou, best philosopher, who yet dost keepThy 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!16On 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 immortalityBroods 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 mightOf heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,Why with such earnest pains dost thou provokeThe 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 embersIs something that doth live,That nature yet remembersWhat was so fugitive!The thought of our past years in me doth breedPerpetual benediction: not indeedFor that which is most worthy to be blest—Delight and liberty, the simple creedOf childhood, whether busy or at rest,With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—Not for these I raiseThe song of thanks and praise;But for those obstinate questioningsOf sense and outward things,Fallings from us, vanishings;17Blank misgivings18of a creatureMoving about in worlds not realized,High instincts before which our mortal natureDid 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 makeOur noisy years seem moments in the beingOf 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 seaWhich brought us hither,Can in a moment travel thither,And see the children sport upon the shore,And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye birds! sing, sing a joyous song!And let the young lambs boundAs to the tabor's sound!We in thought will join your throng,Ye that pipe and ye that play,Ye that through your hearts to-dayFeel the gladness of the May!What though the radiance which was once so brightBe now forever taken from my sight,Though nothing can bring back the hourOf splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower?We will grieve not, rather findStrength in what remains behind;In the primal sympathyWhich, having been, must ever be;In the soothing thoughts that springOut 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,Forebode not any severing of our loves!Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;I only have relinquished one delightTo live beneath your more habitual sway.I love the brooks, which down their channels fret,Even more than when I tripped lightly as they:The innocent brightness of a new-born dayIs lovely yet:The clouds that gather round the setting sun19Do take a sober coloring from an eyeThat 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 giveThoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

"This was composed," says Wordsworth, "during my residence at Town-End, Grasmere (1803-1806). Two years at least passed between the writing of the first four stanzas and the remaining part. To the attentive and competent reader the whole sufficiently explains itself, but there may be no harm in adverting here to particular feelings or experiences of my own mind on which the structure of the poem partly rests. Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being. I have said elsewhere:

'A simple childThat lightly draws its breath,And feels its life in every limb,What should it know of death?'[44:A]

"But it was not so much from the source of animal vivacity thatmydifficulty came, as from a sense of the indomitableness of the spirit within me. I used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and almost persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I should be translated in something of the same way to heaven. With a feeling congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature. Many times while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to reality. At that time I was afraid of mere processes.In later periods of life I have deplored, as we have all reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite character, and have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in the lines,Obstinate questionings, etc. To that dream-like vividness and splendor which invests objects of sight in childhood every one, I believe, if he could look back, could bear testimony, and I need not dwell upon it here; but having in the poem regarded it as a presumptive evidence of a prior state of existence, I think it right to protest against a conclusion which has given pain to some good and pious persons, that I meant to inculcate such a belief. It is far too shadowy a notion to be recommended to faith as more than an element in our instincts of immortality. But let us bear in mind that, though the idea is not advanced in Revelation, there is nothing there to contradict it, and the fall of man presents an analogy in its favor. Accordingly, a pre-existent state has entered into the popular creeds of many nations, and among all persons acquainted with classic literature is known as an ingredient in Platonic philosophy. Archimedes said that he could move the world if he had a point whereon to rest his machine. Who has not felt the same aspirations as regards the world of his mind? Having to wield some of its elements when I was impelled to write this poem on the 'Immortality of the Soul,' I took hold of the notion of pre-existence as having sufficient foundation in humanity for authorizing me to make for my purpose the best use of it I could as a poet."

Lord Houghton says of this poem: "If I am asked what is the greatest poem in the English language, I never for a moment hesitate to say, Wordsworth's 'Ode on the Intimations of Immortality.'"

Principal Shairp says: "'The Ode on Immortality' marks the highest limit which the tide of poetic inspiration has reached in England within this century, or indeed since the days of Milton."

The idea of the pre-existence of the soul had already been treated by Henry Vaughan in "Silex Scintillans" (1655).

"Happy those infant days, when IShined in my angel-infancy!Before I understood this placeAppointed for my second race,Or taught my soul to fancy aughtBut a white, celestial thought;When yet I had not walked aboveA mile or two from my first Love,And looking back at that short spaceCould see a glimpse of his bright face."

Shelley, in "A Lament," hints at the same thought:

"O world! O life! O time!On whose last steps I climb,Trembling at that where I had stood before,When will return the glory of your prime?No more—oh, never more!"Out of the day and nightA joy has taken flight;Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,Move my faint heart with grief, but with delightNo more—oh, never more!"

"O world! O life! O time!On whose last steps I climb,Trembling at that where I had stood before,When will return the glory of your prime?No more—oh, never more!

"Out of the day and nightA joy has taken flight;Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,Move my faint heart with grief, but with delightNo more—oh, never more!"

1.The child is father, etc.These lines are from a short poem by Wordsworth, entitled "My Heart leaps up":

"My heart leaps up when I beholdA 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,Or let me die!The child is father of the man;And I could wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety."

Compare with Milton's lines in 'Paradise Regained,' Bk. IV:

"The childhood shows the manAs morning shows the day."

2.apparelled.From Fr.pareil, Lat.parilis. Other English words aspair,compare, etc., are similarly derived. Toapparelis strictly to pair, to suit, to put like to like.

3.tabor.From Old Fr.tabour, Fr.tambour. Compare Eng.tambourine. Originally from the roottap, Gr.tup, to strike lightly. An ancient musical instrument,—a small one-ended drum having a handle projecting from the frame, by which it was held in the left hand, while it was beaten with a stick held in the right hand.

4.the cataracts.The poet has probably in mind the "ghills" or falls of his own lake country. The metaphor which he uses is a bold one.

5.the echoes.Compare with a similar line by Shelley:

"Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains."

—Adonais, 127.

6.the fields of sleep."The yet reposeful, slumbering country side."—Hales."The fields that were dark during the hours of sleep."—Knight.

7.jollity.Merriment. From Lat.jovialis. See Milton's 'L'Allegro,' 26:

"Haste thee nymph and bring with theeJest and youthful jollity."

8.May.May, with the poets, is the month of gayety. The older poetry especially is full of May raptures. Chaucer says:

"For May will have no sluggardy a-night:The season pricketh every gentle heart,And maketh him out of his sleep to start."

9.coronal.A crown of flowers, a chaplet. As at the Roman banquets. On such occasions it was usual for the host to give chaplets to his guests. Festoons of flowers were also sometimes hung over their necks and breasts. The chaplet, or coronal, was regarded as a cheerful ornament and symbol of festivity.

10.the babe leaps up.That is for joy. See the poem, "My heart leaps up," on page46.

11.there's a tree.Compare this thought with that contained in the following lines:

"Only, one little sight, one plant,. . . whene'er the leaf grows thereIts drop comes from my heart, that's all."

—Browning's May and Death.

12.pansy.The flower of thought. From Fr.pensée, thought;penser, to think. "It probably derived its name, thought or fancy, from its fanciful appearance."—Nares.Another derivation of the word is frompanacea, meaningall-heal, a name given by the Greeks to a plant which was popularly supposed to cure diseases and dispel sorrow. The notion that the pansy is a cure for grief is shown in its common English name,heart's-ease.

13.Our birth is but a sleep.The idea of pre-existence was a favorite one of the ancient philosophers. The doctrine of metempsychosis, a form of the same idea, was held by the ancient Egyptians and is still maintained by the Buddhists. Tennyson says:

"As old mythologies relate,Some draught of Lethe might awaitThe slipping through from state to state."And if I lapsed from nobler place,Some legend of a fallen raceAlone might hint of my disgrace."—Two Voices.

"As old mythologies relate,Some draught of Lethe might awaitThe slipping through from state to state.

"And if I lapsed from nobler place,Some legend of a fallen raceAlone might hint of my disgrace."—Two Voices.

14.Behold the child.Pope gives a similar picture:

"Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw;Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,A little louder, but as empty quite."—Essay on Man.

When Wordsworth wrote of

"A six years' darling of a pigmy size,"

he probably had in mind Hartley Coleridge, who was then a child of that age. See his poem "To Hartley Coleridge, Six Years Old."

15.humorous stage.See Shakespeare's lines beginning "All the world's a stage," "As You like It," Act ii, sc. 7. The wordhumoroushas here a special sense, such as is used by Ben Jonson in his "Every Man in his Humor."

16.best philosopher . . . mighty prophet! seer blest!Stopford Brooke says: "These expressions taken separately have scarcely any recognizable meaning. By taking them all together, we feel rather than see that Wordsworth intended to say that the child, having lately come from a perfect existence, in which he saw truth directly, and was at home with God, retains, unknown to us, that vision;—and, because he does, is the best philosopher, since he sees at once that which we through philosophy are endeavoring to reach; is the mighty prophet, because in his actions and speech he tells unconsciously the truths he sees, but the sight of which we have lost; is more closely haunted by God, more near to the immortal life, more purely and brightly free because he half shares in the pre-existent life and glory out of which he has come."—Theology in the English Poets.

17.Fallings from us, vanishings."Fits of utter dreaminess and abstraction, when nothing material seems solid, but everything mere mist and shadow."—Hales.

18.Blank misgivings.Compare Tennyson, "Two Voices":

"Moreover, something is or seems,That touches me with mystic gleams,Like glimpses of forgotten dreams;"Of something felt, like something here;Of something done, I know not where;Such as no language may declare."

"Moreover, something is or seems,That touches me with mystic gleams,Like glimpses of forgotten dreams;

"Of something felt, like something here;Of something done, I know not where;Such as no language may declare."

19.The clouds that gather.Compare these lines with the following from Wordsworth's "Excursion":

"Ah! why in ageDo we revert so fondly to the walksOf childhood, but that there the soul discernsThe dear memorial footsteps unimpair'dOf her own native vigor, thence can hearReverberations and a choral song,Commingling with the incense that ascendsUndaunted toward the imperishable heavens,From her own lonely altar?"

[44:A]The first stanza of We are Seven, said to have been written by Coleridge.

We walked along, while bright and redUprose the morning sun;And Matthew1stopped, he looked, and said,'The will of God be done!'A village schoolmaster was he,With hair of glittering gray;As blithe a man as you could seeOn a spring holiday.And on that morning, through the grass,And by the steaming rills,We travelled merrily, to passA day among the hills.'Our work,' said I, 'was well begun:Then, from thy breast what thought,Beneath so beautiful a sun,So sad a sigh has brought?'A second time did Matthew stop,And fixing still his eyeUpon the eastern mountain-top,To me he made reply:'Yon cloud with that long purple cleftBrings fresh into my mindA day like this which I have leftFull thirty years behind.And just above yon slope of cornSuch colors, and no other,Were in the sky, that April morn,Of this the very brother.With rod and line I sued the sportWhich that sweet season gave,And, to the church-yard come, stopped shortBeside my daughter's grave.Nine summers had she scarcely seen,The pride of all the vale:And then she sang;—she would have beenA very nightingale.Six feet in earth my Emma lay;And yet I loved her more,For so it seemed, than till that dayI e'er had loved before.And, turning from her grave, I met,Beside the churchyard yew,A blooming girl, whose hair was wetWith points of morning dew.A basket on her head she bare;Her brow was smooth and white:To see a child so very fair,It was a pure delight!No fountain from its rocky caveE'er tripped with foot so free;She seemed as happy as a waveThat dances on the sea.There came from me a sigh of painWhich I could ill confine;I looked at her, and looked again:And did not wish her mine!'Matthew is in his grave, yet now,Methinks, I see him stand,As at that moment, with a boughOf wilding2in his hand.

We walked along, while bright and redUprose the morning sun;And Matthew1stopped, he looked, and said,'The will of God be done!'

A village schoolmaster was he,With hair of glittering gray;As blithe a man as you could seeOn a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass,And by the steaming rills,We travelled merrily, to passA day among the hills.

'Our work,' said I, 'was well begun:Then, from thy breast what thought,Beneath so beautiful a sun,So sad a sigh has brought?'

A second time did Matthew stop,And fixing still his eyeUpon the eastern mountain-top,To me he made reply:

'Yon cloud with that long purple cleftBrings fresh into my mindA day like this which I have leftFull thirty years behind.

And just above yon slope of cornSuch colors, and no other,Were in the sky, that April morn,Of this the very brother.

With rod and line I sued the sportWhich that sweet season gave,And, to the church-yard come, stopped shortBeside my daughter's grave.

Nine summers had she scarcely seen,The pride of all the vale:And then she sang;—she would have beenA very nightingale.

Six feet in earth my Emma lay;And yet I loved her more,For so it seemed, than till that dayI e'er had loved before.

And, turning from her grave, I met,Beside the churchyard yew,A blooming girl, whose hair was wetWith points of morning dew.

A basket on her head she bare;Her brow was smooth and white:To see a child so very fair,It was a pure delight!

No fountain from its rocky caveE'er tripped with foot so free;She seemed as happy as a waveThat dances on the sea.

There came from me a sigh of painWhich I could ill confine;I looked at her, and looked again:And did not wish her mine!'

Matthew is in his grave, yet now,Methinks, I see him stand,As at that moment, with a boughOf wilding2in his hand.

This poem was written in 1799, and published the following year.

1.Matthew.This old schoolmaster is described elsewhere by Wordsworth as being "made up of several, both of his class and men of other occupations."

2.wilding.A twig from a wild apple tree.

"Ten ruddy wildings in the wood I found."—Dryden.

Behold her, single in the field,Yon solitary highland lass!Reaping and singing by herself;Stop here, or gently pass!Alone she cuts and binds the grain,And sings a melancholy strain;O listen! for the vale profoundIs overflowing with the sound.No nightingale did ever chauntMore welcome notes to weary bandsOf travellers in some shady hauntAmong Arabian sands:A voice so thrilling ne'er was heardIn spring-time from a cuckoo-bird,Breaking the silence of the seasAmong the farthest Hebrides.Will no one tell me what she sings?—Perhaps the plaintive numbers flowFor old, unhappy, far-off things,And battles long ago:Or is it some more humble lay,Familiar matter of to-day?Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,That has been, or may be again?Whate'er the theme, the maiden sangAs if her song could have no ending;I saw her singing at her work,And o'er the sickle bending;—I listened, motionless and still;And, as I mounted up the hill,The music in my heart I bore,Long after it was heard no more.

No nightingale did ever chauntMore welcome notes to weary bandsOf travellers in some shady hauntAmong Arabian sands:A voice so thrilling ne'er was heardIn spring-time from a cuckoo-bird,Breaking the silence of the seasAmong the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?—Perhaps the plaintive numbers flowFor old, unhappy, far-off things,And battles long ago:Or is it some more humble lay,Familiar matter of to-day?Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,That has been, or may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the maiden sangAs if her song could have no ending;I saw her singing at her work,And o'er the sickle bending;—I listened, motionless and still;And, as I mounted up the hill,The music in my heart I bore,Long after it was heard no more.

William Wordsworthwas born at Cockermouth, a town in Cumberland, England, April 7, 1770. He went to school at Hawkshead, Lancashire, whence in his seventeenth year he was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge. In January, 1791, he took his degree at the University, but without having distinguished himself in any way. The next fifteen or sixteen months were spent in France, just then in the first wild hopes of the Revolution. "In the aspirations and hopes of the revolutionists he was an ardent sharer; he thought that the world's great age was beginning anew;and with all his soul he hailed so splendid an era. The ultimate degradation of that great movement by wild lawlessness, and then by most selfish ambition, alienated his sympathy for it." Towards the close of 1792 he returned to England, and passed the subsequent time among his friends in London and elsewhere till he settled with his sister at Racedown, Dorsetshire, in 1796. In the following year they removed to Alfoxden. It was during this period that he made the acquaintance of Coleridge. Wordsworth had already published (1793) two little volumes of poetry, entitledDescriptive SketchesandThe Evening Walk; but they showed little promise of the triumphs which were to crown his later life. In 1798 the first volume of theLyrical Balladswas published at Bristol, which purported to be the joint work of himself and Mr. Coleridge, but to which the latter contributed only "The Ancient Mariner" and two or three shorter poems. After some months spent in Germany, Wordsworth and his sister established themselves at Grasmere, in the lake country. In 1800 he published the second volume of theLyrical Ballads, and in 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson. From 1799 to 1814 he was mainly busy with his great philosophical poem, to be called "The Recluse," "containing views of Man, Nature, and Society," of which "The Prelude" was to be the introduction and "The Excursion" the Second and main Part. He designed that his minor pieces should be so arranged in connection with this work as to "give them claim to be likened to the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ordinarily included in Gothic churches." This plan, however, was never carried out, as of the First and Third Parts only one book was written, and it has never been published. From 1814 until his death Wordsworth lived serenely and quietly at Rydal Mount, making occasional excursions into Scotland and Wales, and a tour upon the continent. In 1843, upon the death of Southey, he was appointed Poet-Laureate. His life was a long one, of steady work and much happiness. He died April 23, 1850.

The distinguishing feature of Wordsworth's poetry is well set forth in his own words:

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