How fearful is his case whom now God does not chide When sinning worst, to whom even chastening is de nied! God often would enrich, but finds not where to place His treasure, nor in hand nor heart a vacant space. O, leave to God at sight of sin incensed to be! Sinner if thou art grieved, that is enough for thee. Set not thy heart on things given only with intent Ill fares the child of heaven, who will not entertain On earth the stranger's grief, the exile's sense of pain. Mark how there still has run, enwoven from above, Through thy life's darkest woof, the golden thread of love. Things earthly we must know ere love them: 't is alone Things heavenly that must be first loved and after known. The sinews of Love's arm use makes more firm and strong, Which, being left unused, will disappear ere long. Wouldst thou abolish quite strongholds of self and sin? Fear can but make the breach for Love to enter in. When God afflicts thee, think he hews a rugged stone, Which must be shaped, or else aside as useless thrown. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. Evil, like a rolling stone upon a mountain-top, 315 He knew, who healed our wounds, we quickly should be fain Our old hurts to forget,—so let the scars remain. When will the din of earth grate harshly on our ears? When we have once heard plain the music of the spheres. Why win we not at once what we in prayer require ? That we may learn great things as greatly to desire. The tasks, the joys of earth, the same in heaven will be; Only the little brook has widened to a sea. Who hunt this world's delight too late their hunting rue, When it a lion proves, the hunter to pursue. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD. I. Wordsworth. THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, To me did seem The glory and the freshness of a dream. By night or day, 'The things which I have seen I now can see no more. The rainbow comes and goes, Look round her when the heavens are bare; Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; That there hath passed away a glory from the earth III. Now while the birds thus sing a joyous song, As to the tabour's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep, Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity, 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 The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss I feel, — I feel it all. And the children are culling On every side, 317 In a thousand valleys far and wide, And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm: But there's a tree, of many one, Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? V. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: And cometh from afar : Not in entire forgetfulness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, — The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 318 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. And by the vision splendid At length the man perceives it die away, 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 blisses, A mourning or a funeral ! And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: 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 ; |