THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL.

[From Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.]

  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....

      O joy! that in our embers
        Is something that doth live,
      That nature yet remembers
        What was so fugitive! 
  The thought of our past years in me doth breed
  Perpetual benedictions:  not, indeed,
  For that which is most worthy to be blest;
  Delight and liberty, the simple creed
  Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
  With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast—­
    Not for these I raise
    The song of thanks and praise;
    But for those obstinate questionings
    Of sense and outward things,
    Fallings from us, vanishings;
    Blank misgivings of a creature
  Moving about in worlds not realized,
  High instincts, before which our mortal nature
  Did 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 make
  Our noisy years seem moments in the being
  Of 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 sea
      Which brought us hither;
    Can in a moment travel thither,
  And see the children sport upon the shore,
  And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

LUCY.

  She dwelt among the untrodden ways
    Beside the springs of Dove,
  A maid whom there were none to praise,
    And very few to love.

  A violet by a mossy stone
    Half hidden from the eye: 
  Fair as a star, when only one
    Is shining in the sky.