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.
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
While the earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May morning;

And the children are pulling,

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 look'd 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.

VII.

Behold the child among his new-born blisscs,
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 tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride

The little actor cons another part;

Filling from time to time his "humorous stage*
With all the persons, down to palsied age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation

Were endless imitation.

VIII.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;

Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy 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!

On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find;
Thou, over whom thy immortality
Broods 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 might
Of heaven-born freedom, on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring th' 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!

IX.

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 bless'd;
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;

Black 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 endeavour.
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.

Σ.

Then, sing ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound

As 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-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy

Which having been, must ever be ;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

XI.

And oh ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,
Think not of any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight,

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the brooks, which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they :
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are wos.
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 give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for term.

THE EXCURSION.

Co the Right Honourable William, Earl of Lonsdale, H.G., kt. kc.

OFT, through thy fair domains, illustrious Peer!

In youth I roam'd, on youthful pleasures bent;
And mused in rocky cell or sylvan tent,

Beside swift-flowing Lowther's current clear.
-Now by thy care befriended, I appear

Before thee, LONSDALE, and this Work present,
A token (may it prove a monument!)
Of high respect and gratitude sincere.
Gladly would I have waited till my task
Had reach'd its close; but life is insecure,
And hope full oft fallacious as a dream:
Therefore, for what is here produced, I ask
Thy favour; trusting that Chou wilt not deem
The offering, though imperfect, premature.

BYDAL MOUNT, WESTMORELAND,
July 29, 1814.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

PREFACE.

THE reader must be apprised that this poem belongs to the second part of a long and laborious work ("The Recluse"), which is to consist of hree parts. The author will candidly acknowledge that, if the first of hese had been completed, and in such a manner as to satisfy his own mind, he should have preferred the natural order of publication, and have given that to the world first; but, as the second division of the work was designed to refer more to passing events, and to an existing state of things, han the others were meant to do, more continuous exertion was naturally bestowed upon it, and greater progress made here than in the rest of the poem; and as this part does not depend upon the preceding to a degre which will materially injure its own peculiar interest, the author, comp ng with the earnest entreaties of some valued friends, presents the followng pages to the public.

It may be proper to state whence the poem, of which "The Excursion" s a part derives its title of "The Recluse." Several years ago, when the author retired to his native mountains, with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary work that might live, it was a reasonable thing that he should take a review of his own mind, and examine how far nature and education had qualified him for such employment. As subsidiary to this preparation, he undertook to record, in verse, the origin and progress of his own powers, as far as he was acquainted with them. That work, addressed to a dear friend, most distinguished for his knowledge and genius, and to whom the author's intellect is deeply indebted, has been ong finished; and the result of the investigation which gave rise to it was à determination to compose a philosophical poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society; and to be entitled, "The Recluse," as having for its principal subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retire.