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 utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come;
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
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.
–William Wordsworth