Read the poem.


excerpt from "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" by William Wordsworth


In this poem, Wordsworth conveys his belief that as people age, they lose sight of the joy and purity of life that they experienced as children.


V

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 Pries