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:—

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.

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.