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