To Hartley Coleridge

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

Six Years Old

O THOU whose fancies from afar are brought;

Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,

And fittest to unutterable thought

The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol,

Thou fairy voyager! that dost float

In such clear water, that thy boat

May rather seem

To brood on air than on an earthly stream—

Suspended in a stream as clear as sky,

Where earth and heaven do make one imagery;

O blessèd vision! happy child!

Thou art so exquisitely wild,

I think of thee with many fears

For what may be thy lot in future years.

I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,

Lord of thy house and hospitality;

And Grief, uneasy lover, never rest

But when she sat within the touch of thee.

O too industrious folly!

O vain and causeless melancholy!

Nature will either end thee quite;

Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,

Preserve for thee, by individual right,

A young lamb’s heart among the full-grown flocks.

What hast thou to do with sorrow,

Or the injuries of to-morrow?

Thou art a dew-drop, which the morn brings forth,

Ill fitted to sustain unkindly shocks,

Or to be trailed along the soiling earth;

A gem that glitters while it lives,

And no forewarning gives,

But, at the touch of wrongs, without a strife,

Slips in a moment out of life.