Poetry for April 7

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day for April 7, 2007 – WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S BIRTHDAY – Go Willy!! Donna's Choice

William Wordsworth

from ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARY CHILDHOOD

The Child is Father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

I

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 wheresoe’er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more….

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….

XI

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripped 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 won.

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.

And one by sister, Dorothy

Eliza's choice

"A Cottage in Grasmere Vale" (composed c. 1805)

Peaceful our valley, fair and green,
And beautiful her cottages,
Each in its nook, its sheltered hold,
Or guarded by its tuft of trees--

Many and beautiful they are,
But there is one that I love best,
A lowly shed in truth it is,
A brother of the rest.

Yet when I sit on rock or hill,
Down looking on the valley fair,
That cottage with its clustering trees
Summons my heart--it settles there.

Others there are whose small domain
Of fertile fields and hedgerows green
Might more entice a wanderer's mind
To wish that there his home had been.

Such wish be his! I blame him not,
My fancy is unfettered, wild!
I love that house because it is
The very mountains' child.

Fields hath it of its own, green fields,
But they are craggy, steep and bare;
Their fence is of the mountain stone
And moss and lichen flourish there.

And when the storm comes from the north
It lingers near that pastoral spot,
And piping through the mossy walls,
It seems delighted with its lot.

And let it take its own delight,
And let it range the pastures bare;
Until it reach that group of trees
It may not enter there.

A green unfading grove it is,
Skirted with many a lesser tree--
Hazel and holly, beech and oak--
A bright and flourishing company!

Precious the shelter of those trees,
They screen the cottage that I love;
The sunshine pierces to the roof
And the tall pine-trees tower above.