Thursday 12 July 2012

The Thursday Poem

Young Woman Reading by a Window - Delphin Enjolras

From Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath 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 visions splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

William Wordsworth
(7th April 1770 - 23rd April 1850)

from the book: Poem for the Day One

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