The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours.

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.

A happy youth, and their old age Is beautiful and free.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.

Milton, thou should'st be living at this hour.

Sweet Mercy! to the gates of heaven This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven Effaced forever.

Alas! how little can a moment show Of an eye where feeling plays In ten thousand dewy rays: A face o'er which a thousand shadows go!