VII Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, 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, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral And this hath now his heart, 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, 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 As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.

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. 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.

Wordsworth odes