Intimations of Immortality

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,

Heaven lies about is 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 in it his joy;

The Youth who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature's priest,

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

(William Wordsworth)