Day: June 13, 2016

Ariel

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell

I will taste divine

Make my heart into a cottage pie.
Already it is minced and lies estranged
My   enemies insult me with their lies
And my last will and testament is made.

An onion and a carrot chopped up fine,
Saute  with these my heart till  all are gold
With herbs and spices I will taste divine
A mashed potato will a rooftop mould.

Do not forget my blood to use as sauce
Though now it’s cold, with garlic  make it boil.
For what is gravy but the blood of  choice
With  sliced  onion  fried in olive oil?

O foes and devils eat me and you’ll be
Transformed into  myself, your enemy.

Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

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CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Francis T. Palgrave, ed. (1824–1897). The Golden Treasury.  1875.
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W. Wordsworth
CCLXXXVII. Ode on 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
        Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.          5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
        Turn wheresoe’er I may,
            By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
        The rainbow comes and goes,   10
        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;   15
    The sunshine is a glorious birth;
    But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
    And while the young lambs bound   20
        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;—   25
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   30
    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!   35
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,   40
The fullness 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 pulling   45
            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!   50
        —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:   55
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
        Hath had elsewhere its setting   60
            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:   65
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;   70
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,   75
And fade into the light of common day.
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,   80
        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.
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,   85
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,   90
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
        A wedding or a festival,
        A mourning or a funeral;
            And this hath now his heart,   95
        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,  100
        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;  105
        As if his whole vocation
        Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
        Thy soul’s immensity;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep  110
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  115
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  120
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,  125
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
        O joy! that in our embers
          Is something that doth live;
        That Nature yet remembers  130
          What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest,
Delight and liberty, the simple creed  135
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  140
    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  145
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,  150
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;  155
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,  160
        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,  165
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
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,  170
        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,  175
    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,  180
        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.  185
And, O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forbode not 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:  190
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  195
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 won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,  200
To me the meanest flower that blows can give