The Full Text of “Ode: Intimations of

Immortality from Recollections of Early

Childhood”
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
(Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up")

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1There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
2 The earth, and every common sight,
3 To me did seem
4 Apparelled in celestial light,
5 The glory and the freshness of a dream.
6It is not now as it hath been of yore—
7 Turn wheresoe'er I may,
8 By night or day,
9The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

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10 The Rainbow comes and goes,
11 And lovely is the Rose,
12 The Moon doth with delight
13 Look round her when the heavens are bare,
14 Waters on a starry night
15 Are beautiful and fair;
16 The sunshine is a glorious birth;
17 But yet I know, where'er I go,
18That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

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19Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
20 And while the young lambs bound
21 As to the tabor's sound,
22To me alone there came a thought of grief:
23A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
24 And I again am strong:
25The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
26No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
27I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
28 The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
29 And all the earth is gay;
30 Land and sea
31 Give themselves up to jollity,
32 And with the heart of May
33 Doth every Beast keep holiday—
34 Thou Child of Joy,
35Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy!
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36Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
37 Ye to each other make; I see
38The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
39 My heart is at your festival,
40 My head hath its coronal,
41The fullness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
42 Oh evil day! if I were sullen
43 While Earth herself is adorning,
44 This sweet May morning,
45 And the Children are culling
46 On every side,
47In a thousand valleys far and wide,
48 Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
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49And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm—
50 I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
51 —But there's a Tree, of many, one,
52A single Field which I have looked upon,
53Both of them speak of something that is gone:
54 The Pansy at my feet
55 Doth the same tale repeat:
56Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
57Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

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58Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
59The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
60 Hath had elsewhere its setting,
61 And cometh from afar:
62 Not in entire forgetfulness,
63 And not in utter nakedness,
64But trailing clouds of glory do we come
65 From God, who is our home:
66Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
67Shades of the prison-house begin to close
68 Upon the growing Boy
69But he
70Beholds the light, and whence it flows,
71 He sees it in his joy;
72The Youth, who daily farther from the east
73 Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
74 And by the vision splendid
75 Is on his way attended;
76At length the Man perceives it die away,
77And fade into the light of common day.

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78Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
79Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
80 And, even with something of a Mother's mind,
81 And no unworthy aim,
82The homely Nurse doth all she can
83To make her foster child, her Inmate Man,
84 Forget the glories he hath known,
85And that imperial palace whence he came.

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86Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
87A six years' Darling of a pygmy size!
88See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
89Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
90With light upon him from his father's eyes!
91See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
92Some fragment from his dream of human life,
93Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
94 A wedding or a festival,
95 A mourning or a funeral;
96 And this hath now his heart,
97 And unto this he frames his song;
98 Then will he fit his tongue
99To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
100 But it will not be long
101 Ere this be thrown aside,
102 And with new joy and pride
103The little Actor cons another part;
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104Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"
105With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
106That Life brings with her in her equipage;
107 As if his whole vocation
108 Were endless imitation.

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109Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
110 Thy Soul's immensity;
111Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
112Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
113That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
114Haunted forever by the eternal mind—
115 Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
116 On whom those truths do rest,
117Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
118In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
119Thou, over whom thy Immortality
120Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
121A Presence which is not to be put by;
122Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
123Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
124Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
125The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
126Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
127Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
128And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
129Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

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130 O joy! that in our embers
131 Is something that doth live,
132 That Nature yet remembers
133What was so fugitive!
134The thought of our past years in me doth breed
135Perpetual benediction: not indeed
136For that which is most worthy to be blest;
137Delight and liberty, the simple creed
138Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
139With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast—
140 Not for these I raise
141 The song of thanks and praise;
142 But for those obstinate questionings
143 Of sense and outward things,
144 Fallings from us, vanishings;
145 Blank misgivings of a Creature
146Moving about in worlds not realised,
147High instincts before which our mortal Nature
148Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised;
149 But for those first affections,
150 Those shadowy recollections,
151 Which, be they what they may,
152Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
153Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
154 Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
155Our noisy years seem moments in the being
156Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
157 To perish never;

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158Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
159 Nor Man nor Boy,
160Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
161Can utterly abolish or destroy!
162 Hence in a season of calm weather
163 Though inland far we be,
164Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
165 Which brought us hither,
166 Can in a moment travel thither,
167And see the Children sport upon the shore,
168And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

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169Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
170 And let the young Lambs bound
171 As to the tabor's sound!
172We in thought will join your throng,
173 Ye that pipe and ye that play,
174 Ye that through your hearts today
175 Feel the gladness of the May!
176What though the radiance which was once so bright
177Be now forever taken from my sight,
178 Though nothing can bring back the hour
179Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
180 We will grieve not, rather find
181 Strength in what remains behind;
182 In the primal sympathy
183 Which having been must ever be;
184 In the soothing thoughts that spring
185 Out of human suffering;
186 In the faith that looks through death,
187In years that bring the philosophic mind.
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188And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
189Forebode not any severing of our loves!
190Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
191I only have relinquished one delight
192To live beneath your more habitual sway.
193I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
194Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
195The innocent brightness of a newborn Day
196 Is lovely yet;
197The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
198Do take a sober colouring from an eye
199That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
200Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
201Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
202Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
203To me the meanest flower that blows can give
204Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

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STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING
By
ROBERT FROST

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WHERE THE MIND IS WITHOUT FEAR
BY
GURUDEV RABINDRANATH TAGORE

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 LAW LIKE LOVE BY W.H. AUDEN

Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,

Law is the one
All gardeners obey
To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.
Law is the wisdom of the old,
The impotent grandfathers feebly scold;
The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,
Law is the senses of the young.

Law, says the priest with a priestly look,

Expounding to an unpriestly people,
Law is the words in my priestly book,
Law is my pulpit and my steeple.

Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,

Speaking clearly and most severely,
Law is as I've told you before,
Law is as you know I suppose,
Law is but let me explain it once more,
Law is The Law.

Yet law-abiding scholars write:

Law is neither wrong nor right,
Law is only crimes
Punished by places and by times,
Law is the clothes men wear
Anytime, anywhere,
Law is Good morning and Good night.

Others say, Law is our Fate;

Others say, Law is our State;
Others say, others say
Law is no more,
Law has gone away.
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And always the loud angry crowd,
Very angry and very loud,
Law is We,
And always the soft idiot softly Me.

If we, dear, know we know no more

Than they about the Law,
If I no more than you
Know what we should and should not do
Except that all agree
Gladly or miserably
That the Law is
And that all know this
If therefore thinking it absurd
To identify Law with some other word,
Unlike so many men
I cannot say Law is again,

No more than they can we suppress

The universal wish to guess
Or slip out of our own position
Into an unconcerned condition.
Although I can at least confine
Your vanity and mine
To stating timidly
A timid similarity,
We shall boast anyway:
Like love I say.

Like love we don't know where or why,

Like love we can't compel or fly,
Like love we often weep,
Like love we seldom keep.

W. H. Auden
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 FREEDOM JUSTICE & EQUALITY
BY
LONNIE HICKS

Freedom, Justice and Equality

sat down to discuss their differences
as to who in the final differentiation
was best for the Citizens.

Equality spoke stating 'Every human being

is to be seen as equal.
Classes, Kings, and Robber Barons
have mounted historically over-weening excesses.

From them sprung oppression, slavery,

disease and poverty
other multiple negatives
in the sad human panoply.

Society rebelled against them

all hoisting my banner
which reads:
'What We Need is Equality'

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All agreed this was so
for a time
with Justice finally noting
'Well Equality all you say is true
but also mark
how easy it is to confuse Economic Opportunity
with Political Equality.
Some systems have one
but surely not the other.

These two, of course, are not the same;

in fact you Equality are perfectly
compatible with Perfect Slavery.
All you have to is treat
all the slaves the same!

'Besides' Justice said 'Economic Opportunity

merely addresses the beginning of the race.
What of the middle and the end;
is Perfect Inequality tolerated there
as millions sink into poverty? '

'No' Justice sighed, 'Equality you are a good plank

but you do not over-arc and don't really solve
important problems.
I, Justice, am needed to balance all the ills
you're not able to address.'

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Justice shifted slightly in her dark robes
and spoke of that need to protect Citizens
utilizing legal and governing rules.

'Rule by law
not women or men is better
grafted to all systems:
Balancing and adjusting many of the
the ills Undemocracy brings.'

'Justice is centerpiece
where all the values of the citizens
are sifted and set aright-
enforcements of the Covenants.
It is I,
through which
all society is possible.'

Freedom spoke slowly

gathering verbal momentum:
'Justice you are mystical
but in the end precisely note that
laws are made by men and women
and is therefore rule by Judges.
This does not seem to me
to be much better than rule by Kings.'

'No mere Justice

does not work for me.
Clearly the object we all seek,
is Freedom- Me.
Justice merely refers to
misdeeds but not the essence
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of what we seek.
That would be me Freedom.
For here is where all potential is protected,
the Cauldron of the Probabilities.

Freedom is what we fight for,

you, Justice, we merely sue for-
if we have the money
to pay your attorneys! '

Equality smiled wryly at Freedom's joke saying

'but you Freedom have many aliases
many definitions labeled;
which Freedom are you today:
Freedom From
or Freedom to
Free speech
or the Freedom of the Road
or merely Freedom From All Rules?
And I would note you proclaim
Liberty For All
while tolerating
Tyranny while at Work.

You Americans define Freedom

as Freedom for Yourself
what of Freedom for Others,
in fact, the Freedom of the World.
You fall silent there.'

Outside a crowd gathered,

Justice leaned to part the curtains,
describing the outside scene.
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There was Ethics and Morality,
Nature
God and Divinity
the usual crowd all clamoring
to be heard
or to gain entry.

Freedom said
'they have right to their say.'
Equality mused 'they all make equal claims.'
Justice said 'if given the chance
like vigilante villagers
they'll be pounding closed-fisted
at every citizens door.'

They all agreed

and sipped their tea
until at the appointed hour
when key in lock
admitted the rightful owner of the house.

Citizens Us
was framed in the doorway Portal
with her constant companion Social Covenant;
They entered
with Citizen saying
'You get all three of you
if you chose Citizen Community
because there you get all of you
plus me.

Lonnie Hicks

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