Ode on Imitations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood

To me there came a thought of grief;

A timely utterance gave that thought relief,

And I am again strong.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,

Hath had elsewhere it s setting, and cometh from afar:

Not in utter forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God who is our home.

Though nothing can bring back the hour

of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, but 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.

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.

~William Wordsworth