II.

The rainbow comes and goes,
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;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

III.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief;
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong. 
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,—­
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong. 
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng;
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity;
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—­
Thou child of joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd boy!

IV.

Ye blessed creatures!  I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival. 
My head hath its coronal,—­
The fulness of your bliss, I feel, I feel it all. 
O 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,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother’s arm;—­
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!—­
But there’s a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have looked upon,—­
Both of them speak of something that is gone;
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat. 
Whither is fled the visionary gleam? 
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

  V.

  Our birth is but a sleep and 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 come
    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—­
    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: 
  At length the Man perceives it die away,
  And fade into the light of common day.

  VI.

  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.