Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our Life’s Star
Hath had elsewhere it’s 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.
William Wordsworth: Intimations of Immortality
