"Ode to Immortality"

"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, the earth and every common sight to me did seem clothed in celestial light. The glory and the freshness of a dream is not now as it has 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 does 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 has passed away a glory from the earth.

The radiance which was once so bright be now for ever taken from my sight though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower. And O ye fountains, meadows, hills and groves forebode not any severing of our love. Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might.

The clouds that gather 'round the setting sun do take a sober coloring from an eye that has kept watch o'er man's mortality. 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 (1770-1850)~