“Where Lies The Truth? Has Man, In Wisdom’S Creed”

Composed 1846.--Published 1850

One of the “Evening Voluntaries.”--ED.

Where lies the truth? has Man, in wisdom’s creed, A pitiable doom; for respite brief A care more anxious, or a heavier grief? Is he ungrateful, and doth little heed God’s bounty, soon forgotten; or indeed, Must Man, with labour born, awake to sorrow When Flowers rejoice and Larks with rival speed Spring from their nests to bid the Sun good morrow? They mount for rapture as their songs proclaim Warbled in hearing both of earth and sky; But o’er the contrast wherefore heave a sigh? Like those aspirants let us soar--our aim, Through life’s worst trials, whether shocks or snares, A happier, brighter, purer Heaven than theirs.

1850.

Who that lies down and may not wake to sorrow

MS.

1850.

They mount for rapture; this their …

MS.

This sonnet was suggested by the death of Wordsworth’s grandson commemorated in the previous sonnet, and by the alarming illness of his brother, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the expected death of a nephew (John Wordsworth), at Ambleside, the only son of his eldest brother, Richard.--ED.