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.[333]
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 200
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows[334] can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.[335]
This great Ode was first printed as the last poem in the second volume of the edition of 1807. At that date Wordsworth gave it the simple title Ode, prefixing to it the motto, “Paulò majora canamus.” In 1815, when he revised the poem throughout, he named it—in the characteristic manner of many of his titles—diffuse and yet precise, Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood; and he then prefixed to it the lines of his own earlier poem on the Rainbow (March 1802):—
The Child is Father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be