Ode: Intimations of Immortality

“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,The things which I have seen I now can see no more.”

“The Rainbow comes and goes,That there hath past away a glory from the earth.”

“Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the callThis sweet May-morning.”

“Whither is fled the visionary gleam?Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:Upon the growing boy.”

“The youth, who daily farther from the eastAnd fade into the light of common day.”

“As if his whole vocationWere endless imitation.”

“Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belieIn darkness lost, the darkness of the grave.”