To me alone there came a thought of grief;
A timely utterance gave the thought of relief,
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
hath had elsewhere its setting,
and cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in entire nakedness,
From 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, rather find
strength in what remains behind;
in the primal sympathy
which having been must ever be;
in the soothing thoughts that spring
from 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 (abridged)
