William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. - Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
from "Ode: Intimations of Immortality..."
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 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, | 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. |
. . .
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: | |
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, | 60 |
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 come | 65 |
From God, who is our home: | |
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, | 70 |
He sees it in his joy; | |
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; | 75 |
At length the Man perceives it die away, | |
And fade into the light of common day. |