Ars Poetica

My favourite lines of poetry, taken from:

536. Ode
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?  
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?  
 
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:  
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,   60
        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   65
        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,   70
        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;   75
At length the Man perceives it die away,  
And fade into the light of common day.

From: William Wordsworth. 1770–1850

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