1. Not seeming real (see Wordsworth's comment about 'this abyss of idealism' in the headnote on p. 306).
.
312 / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
180
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;
185 In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
II
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode0 not any severing of our loves! predict, portend
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
190 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
195 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.2
200 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. 1802-04 1807
Ode to Duty1
Jam non consilio bonus, sed more eo per ductus, ut non tantum recte
facere possim, sed nisi recte facere non possim.2
Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!3
O Duty! if that name thou love
2. In Greece foot races were often run for the prize Thomas Gray and rejected the personifications of a branch or wreath of palm. Wordsworth's line that were customary in 18th-century poetry,
echoes Paul, 1 Corinthians 9.24, who uses such Wordsworth here reverts to a standard 18th
races as a metaphor for life: 'Know ye not that they century form, an ode addressed to a personified
which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the abstraction.
prize?' 2. Now I am not good by conscious intent, but
1. This Ode .. . is on the model of Gray's 'Ode to have been so trained by habit that I not only can Adversity' which is copied from Horace's 'Ode to act rightly but am unable to act other than rightly
Fortune.' Many and many a time have I been twit-(Latin). Added in 1837, this epigraph is an adap
ted by my wife and sister for having forgotten this tation from Moral Epistles 120.10 by Seneca (4
dedication of myself to the stern lawgiver [Words-B.c.E?65 C.E.), Stoic philosopher and writer of
worth's note, 1843]. tragedies.
In this poem, a striking departure from his 3. Cf. Milton's Paradise Lost 9.652-54. Eve for a
earlier forms and ideas, Wordsworth abandons moment resists the serpent's recommendation of
