I
Houve um tempo em que a relva, a fonte, o rio, a mata
E o horizonte se vestiam
De uma luz grata,
— Visto que assim me pareciam —,
E da opulência que nos sonhos é inata.
Hoje está sendo tal como foi outrora;—
Seja o que for, eu,
Na luz ou breu,
Eu não verei jamais o que se foi embora.
II
O arco-íris vai, vem,
E a rosa nos faz bem;
Alegre, a lua nota
Que o céu está completamente nu; à luz
De estrelas, a água brota
E é belo o que ela reproduz;
A aurora é sempre um nascimento;
E contudo, eu sei muito bem
Que a glória passou por nós em algum momento.
III
Agora, enquanto as aves cantam de contento
E enquanto o cordeirinho salta
Ao som do que o exalta,
A mim apenas veio uma ideia de dor:
Enunciei-o e de repente ela passou,
E me encho de alento:
Trombeteiam cascatas frente ao precipício;
Minha dor não mais matará o clima opulento;
Ouço o Eco que vem das grutas e ouço o Vento
Que encerra em si o sono tal como um resquício,
E alegre é a terra;
Todo o mar
Vem a se ufanar
E a Fera se aferra
Ao sono na serra;—
Você, Criança,
Menino pastor, grite até onde, Ó Criança, o grito alcança!
IV
E vocês, Criaturas, eu escuto afinal
O que dizem entre vocês
E vejo o céu que frui também vossa altivez;
Meu ser em vosso festival,
Coroado, o total
De vossa dádiva — ah!, eu sinto… Ó mal!,
Fosse eu soturno enquanto
A Terra se adornasse,
Manhã de Maio face
A qual a infância nasce
No Mundo,
No vale remoto e fecundo;
Enquanto o sol nos acalora
E o Bebê sobe aos braços da Mãe: — ouço agora!
Com alegria eu ouço, eu ouço!
— Mas uma, uma Árvore existe,
Uma Planície que em minh’alma inda persiste,
Lembrando o que se foi e hoje e me deixa triste:
E o Amor-Perfeito
Diz: Que foi feito
Do vislumbre visionário?
Dos sonhos? Do esplendor vário?
V
Nosso nascer não passa de sono e de oblívio:
A Alma que nasce com nós, nosso Astro Vital,
Vive longe de onde vive o
Trajeto de seu fanal;
Não no esquecimento inteiro
Nem na nudez por inteiro,
Mas, arrastando nuvens de glória, viemos
De Deus — nele vivemos —:
É o Céu que a nós circunda e a nossa meninice!
As sombras da prisão começam a cobrir
O Menino que cresce;
Mas ele vê a luz, sabe aonde ela vai ir
E sabe que ela o acresce;
A Juventude, em sacerdócio à Natureza,
Viaja ao Leste numa empresa
Guiada pela
Visão mais bela;
E ao largo o Homem vê que sua vida acaba
E que na luz do hábito ela enfim desaba.
VI
A Terra enche o colo com prazeres seus;
A Terra possui ânsias que ela mesma mantém,
E, possuindo um algo maternal também,
E honesta em seu intuito,
A Terra, ama-de-leite, empenha-se
P’ra que o filho adotivo, a Humanidade, abstenha-se
De todos seus apogeus
E do que nele for trajetória e for muito.
VII
Aprecie a Criança e a plêiade de encantos,
Tesouro de seis anos menor que um pigmeu!
Contemple a paz com que ele enfim adormeceu,
Preocupado co’os beijos de sua mãe, tantos!,
E as tantas bênçãos que seu pai lhe concedeu!
Veja, a seus pés, alguma tabela infantil,
Algum fragmento de seu sonho de ser humano,
Moldado graças a uma arte ainda pueril;
Um casamento ou um festival,
Um lamento ou um funeral;
E a isto ele é servil,
E nisto ele forma seu canto:
Assim afinar-se-á enquanto
Dialoga sobre o amor, o sucesso ou o dano;
Não demorará tanto
Até que largue isto
E de novo, e imprevisto,
Com alegria o Ator mirim faça outro ardil;
Enchendo pouco a pouco sua própria “farsa”
De Personagens, ‘té que a Vida fique esparsa
E, colocando-o na barca, a Vida o ressarça;
Como se imitar fosse
Tudo o que ele fosse.
VIII
Você, cujo semblante exterior desmente
Teu valor inerente;
Você, grande Filósofo, que mantém ainda
A herança; você, que é a Visão entre a cegueira,
Que, surdo e mudo, lê a profundeza infinda
Sempre assombrada pela mente altaneira, —
Ó Vidente!, Ó Profeta!
Que a verdade afeta
E a quem nós procuramos de qualquer maneira,
Por toda a vida, presos no escuro da cova;
Você, sobre quem flui a Fonte da Existência
Que escraviza ao mesmo tempo que renova,
Algo impossível de se ignorar a presença;
A quem a cova
É cama solitária sem sentido ou luz
Do que lá fora luz,
Um lugar onde se descansa e onde se pensa;
Você, Criança, ainda ilustre na amplitude
Da aérea liberdade de tua atitude,
P’ra quê, com dores tão solenes, provocar
Os anos a te darem o que eles vão te dar,
Assim tão cega e santa imersa na batalha?
Não tarda e teu espírito cai no retardo
De uma rotina que imporá a ti um fardo
Que pese e quase como a vida se equivalha!
IX
Alegria!, que em nós
Inda palpita
E repercute a voz —
E nos evita!
Pensar no meu passado faz com que em mim nasça
Uma bênção perpétua: não aquela graça
Que glorifica aquele a quem ela agracia —
Prazer e liberdade, o credo que perpassa
A Infância inteira, na labuta ou calmaria,
Pleno do tatalar da fé que se atavia:—
Nem por estes elevo
Canções de louvor e enlevo;
Mas pelas questões obstinadas
De senso e coisas externadas
Distantes de nós, sublimadas;
Vagos temores da Criatura
Que vaga em meio a mundos não realizados,
Altos instintos onde a efêmera Figura
Treme tal como tremem os Sentenciados:
Por tais afetos prévios
E recordações breves, o
Que vierem a ser, sejam,
Pois são fontes de luz e nos clarejam,
Pois são pontos de luz de nosso olhar;
Guarde a estima por nós, guardando o seu poder
De que a turba dos anos se encurte no Ser
Da Calmaria imorredoura: o despertar
P’ra vida eterna:
O que a surdez e a insânia que às vezes governa,
O Pai, o Filho
E o que vê na alegria um odioso empecilho,
Não poderão matar nem retirar o brilho!
Assim, sendo o clima propício,
Por distantes que estejamos,
Sentimos sempre aquele mar sem fim ou início
Que nos trouxe aonde estamos,
E vemos sempre a Infância que brinca na areia,
E ouvimos sempre o som do mar que assenhoreia.
X
Pois cantem, Aves, cantem canções de contento!
E que o Cordeiro salte,
Alegre, ao som que o exalte!
Nossas vozes serão uma só em pensamento,
Você que brinca ou flauteia
E que tem na sua veia
O agrado que Maio alardeia!
Pois muito embora a glória, que antes cintilara,
Tenha tornado-se distante e coisa rara,
E embora nada traga novamente a hora
Do esplendor no relvado, ou da flor que vigora;
Nós não vamos chorar; iremos
Achar forças no que tivemos
Um dia; no afeto primeiro
Que ainda se mantém inteiro;
No pensamento que consola
E medra quando a dor desola;
Na fé que enxerga além da morte
E na sabedoria do que nós vivemos.
XI
E vocês, Bosques, Fontes, Picos, Matagais,
Não previram que o amor já não seria mais!
E entanto, o coração de meu coração sente
O poder de vocês; eu abandonei somente
Um prazer p’ra viver vosso ciclo usual.
Amo o rio que em seu canal se convulsiona,
Mais do que quando, assim como ele, eu fui frugal;
A luz da Aurora é pura e, como habitual,
Emociona;
As nuvens que rodeiam o pôr-do-sol ganham
O tom-de-cor daquele olhar que mantivera
Vigília sobre nossa tênue Primavera;
Outras raças têm sido, e outras glórias se apanham.
Graças ao coração, que fizemos morada,
Graças a todo o seu temor, carinho e encanto,
Sei que da flor mais simples pode ser gerada
Meditação profunda demais para o pranto.
ODE.
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
I
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
II
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.
III
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!
IV
Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother’s arm:—
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there’s a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look’d upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
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 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.
VI
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother’s mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
VII
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years’ darling of a pigmy size!
See, where ‘mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,
With light upon him from his father’s eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
VIII
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul’s immensity;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o’er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul’s immensity;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o’er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
IX
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
X
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
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;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
XI
And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish’d one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp’d lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
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.
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.
William Wordsworth - tradução de Matheus Mavericco
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
X
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
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;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
XI
And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish’d one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp’d lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
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.
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.
William Wordsworth - tradução de Matheus Mavericco
