Oda Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, de William Wordsworth, que el autor comienza con un fragmento de su poema My heart leaps up when I behold.

«The Child is father of the Man;
and I could wish my days to be
bound each to each by natural piety.»

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.

The Rainbow comes and goes,
and lovely is the Rose,
the Moon doth with delight
look round her when the heavens are bare;
waters on a starry night
are beautiful and fair;
the sunshine is a glorious birth;
but yet I know, where’er I go,
that there hath past away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
and while the young lambs bound
as to the tabor’s sound,
to me alone there came a thought of grief:
a timely utterance gave that thought relief,
and I again am strong:
the cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
no more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
the Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
and all the earth is gay;
land and sea
give themselves up to jollity,
and with the heart of May
doth every Beast keep holiday;—
thou Child of Joy,
shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
shepherd-boy!

Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
ye to each other make; I see
the heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
my heart is at your festival,
my head hath its coronal,
the fulness of your bliss, I feel— I feel it all.
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
while the Earth herself is adorning,
this sweet May-morning,
and the Children are culling
on every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
and the Babe leaps up on his Mother’s arm:—
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
— But there’s a Tree, of many, one,
a single Field which I have looked upon,
both of them speak of something that is gone:
the Pansy at my feet
doth the same tale repeat:
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,
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 splendidis on his way attended;
at length the Man perceives it die away,
and fade into the light of common day.

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.

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.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
thy Soul’s immensity;
thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
that, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,
haunted for ever by the eternal mind, —
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
which we are toiling all our lives to find,
in darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
thou, over whom thy Immortality
broods like the Day, a Master o’er a Slave,
a Presence which is not to be put by;
to whom the grave
is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
of day or the warm light,
a place of thought where we in waiting lie;
thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,
why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
the years to bring the inevitable yoke,
thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
and custom lie upon thee with a weight,
heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers
is something that doth live,
that nature yet remembers
what was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
perpetual benediction: not indeed
for that which is most worthy to be blest;
delight and liberty, the simple creed
of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
with new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: —
not for these I raise
the song of thanks and praise;
but for those obstinate questionings
of sense and outward things,
fallings from us, vanishings;
blank misgivings of a Creature
moving about in worlds not realised,
high instincts before which our mortal Nature
did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:
but for those first affections,
those shadowy recollections,
which, be they what they may,
are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
our noisy years seem moments in the being
of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
to perish never;
which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
nor Man nor Boy,
nor all that is at enmity with joy,
can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
though inland far we be,
our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
which brought us hither,
can in a moment travel thither,
and see the Children sport upon the shore,
and hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
as to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
ye that pipe and ye that play,
ye that through your hearts today
feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
be now for ever taken from my sight,
though nothing can bring back the hour
of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
we will grieve not, rather find
strength in what remains behind;
in the primal sympathy
which having been must ever be;
in the soothing thoughts that spring
out of human suffering;
in the faith that looks through death,
in years that bring the philosophic mind.

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.

[Traducción libre (y parcial) de Saúl Steiner: Hubo un tiempo en que prados, bosques y arroyos, / la tierra y toda visión / me parecían / ataviados de luz celestial, / la gloria y la frescura de un sueño. / No es lo que antaño fue: / hacia donde me vuelva / en el día o la noche, / las cosas que he visto ya no puedo ver. // La Luna con deleite / mira a su alrededor cuando los cielos están despejados; / las Aguas en una noche estrellada / son hermosas y serenas; / el brillo del sol es un glorioso nacimiento; / pero yo sé, vaya donde vaya, / que ha desaparecido una gloria del mundo. // Ahora, mientras las aves cantan una enjoyada canción, / y mientras los corderos brincan / como al ritmo de un tamboril, / solo a mi invadió una sensación de pena: / una expresión oportuna dio a ese pensamiento alivio / y de nuevo soy fuerte: / desde el abismo dan sus trompetadas las cascadas; / nunca más una pena mía estropeará la primavera. // ¡Oh día maldito si estuviera yo sombrío / mientras la Tierra misma se adorna / esta dulce mañana de Mayo! / Y los niños están juntando / en todas partes, / en cien valles amplios y lejanos, / frescas flores; mientras el sol brilla cálido, / y el Niño salta a los brazos de su Madre: / ¡Oigo, oigo, con regocijo oigo! / Pero hay un árbol, de tantos, uno, / una única pradera que había contemplado, / ambos hablan de algo que es ido: / los Pensamientos a mis pies / el mismo cuento repiten: / ¿A dónde ha volado el resplandor visionario? / ¿Dónde están ahora la gloria y el sueño? // Nuestro nacimiento no es más que un dormir y un olvido: / el Alma que se eleva con nosotros, Estrella de nuestra vida, / tuvo en otro lugar su ocaso, / y viene de lejos: / no del todo olvido, / ni en total desnudez, / sino arrastrando nubes de gloria venimos: / de Dios, que es nuestro hogar: / ¡el Cielo nos rodea en nuestra infancia! / Sombras de la prisión comienzan a cerrarse / sobre el Niño que crece, / pero Él conserva la luz, y su fuente, / Él la ve en su alegría. // Contemplen al Niño, en su recién nacida beatitud, / ¡un Encanto de seis años en pigmeas proporciones! / Miren, a sus pies, un pequeño plano o mapa, / fragmentos de su sueño de vida humana, / trazados por él mismo con recién aprendido arte; / un casamiento o un festival, / un funeral o un entierro. / Luego adecuará su habla / para diálogos de negocio, amor o polémica; / pero no pasará mucho tiempo / antes de que todo esto sea descartado, / y con alegría y orgullo nuevos, / el pequeño Actor memorizará otro papel; / llenando de tiempo en tiempo su “humorístico escenario” / con todas las Personas, hasta la temblorosa Edad, / que la Vida trae consigo; / como si su entera vocación / fuera imitación interminable. // Tú, sobre quien la Inmortalidad / se cierne como el Día, como un Amo sobre un Esclavo, / como una Presencia que no se puede eludir; / tú Niño pequeño, pero glorioso en el poder / de la libertad celestial en las alturas de tu ser / ¿Por qué, con tantos ardientes dolores incitas / a los años a traer el yugo inevitable, / así, ciegamente, con tu bendición en contienda? / ¡Muy pronto tu Alma tendrá su carga terrenal, / y la tradición caerá sobre ti con su peso / maciza como el hielo, y casi tan profunda como la vida! // ¡Oh alegría! ¡Que en nuestras ascuas / hay algo que ciertamente vive, / que la naturaleza recuerda / lo que fue tan huidizo! // Cayendo desde nosotros, desvaneciéndose; / vacuas dudas de una Criatura / moviéndose entre mundos no comprendidos, / altas intuiciones ante las cuales nuestra mortal Naturaleza / tiembla como una culpable Cosa sorprendida: / por aquellas primeras afecciones, / aquellos recuerdos sombríos, / que, sean lo que deban, / son aún la fuente luminosa de todo nuestro día, / son aún una luz maestra de todo lo que vemos, / que nos sostiene, aprecia y tiene el poder para hacer / que nuestros años ruidosos parezcan momentos en el ser / del eterno Silencio: verdades que despiertan, / para jamás perecer; / ¡que ni la indiferencia, ni la loca distracción, / ni Hombre o Niño alguno, / ni todo lo que está en enemistad con la Alegría, / puede para siempre derrocar o destruir! // Que aunque el resplandor que fue tan brillante una vez / sea ahora para siempre apartado de mi vista, / aunque nada pueda devolvernos la hora / de esplendor en el césped, de gloria en las flores; / no nos afligiremos, sino que encontraremos / fuerza en lo que perdura; / en la primigenia simpatía / que habiendo sido debe por siempre ser; / en los dulces pensamientos que brotan / del sufrimiento humano; / en la fe que mira a través de la muerte, / en años que traen la mente filosófica. // Y, ¡Oh, Fuentes, Prados, Colinas y Bosques, / no anuncien interrupción alguna en nuestros amores! / Siento a pesar en el corazón de mi corazón su poderío; / yo sólo he renunciado a un placer / para vivir bajo su habitual influjo.]