POEM OF THE DAY

AFTER the communal experience of the General Election, William Wordsworth offers a solitary perspective on the themes of humanity.

EXTRACTS FROM ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY

CHILDHOOD There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore – Turn whereso’er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose, The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where’er I go, That there hath passed 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, 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. 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. 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. 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 tears.