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Sunday Morning Poetry: The Fountain by William Wordsworth

This is a follow up to the previous poem "The Two April Mornings." Here Wordsworth is exploring character that we tend to spend very little time thinking about. In other words, they are on the edge of our consciousness.

How can a young person learn from an old person? It seems paradoxical that you have to experience something in order to understand it and yet elders are constantly giving advice based on their experiences.

This poem is a conversation poem. Young and old are sitting beneath a tree by a natural fountain, when seemingly out of nowhere, the old man grows melancholy. He's remembering his past.

The poem explores loss and grief and has the very memorable lines: "
the wiser mind
Mourns less for what Age takes away, Than what it leaves behind."

THE FOUNTAIN

By William Wordsworth

WE talk’d with open heart, and tongue 

Affectionate and true, 

A pair of friends, though I was young, 

And Matthew seventy-two. 

We lay beneath a spreading oak,         

Beside a mossy seat; 

And from the turf a fountain broke 

And gurgled at our feet. 

‘Now, Matthew!’ said I, ‘let us match 

This water’s pleasant tune         

With some old border-song, or catch 

That suits a summer’s noon. 

‘Or of the church-clock and the chimes 

Sing here beneath the shade 

That half-mad thing of witty rhymes         

Which you last April made!’ 

In silence Matthew lay, and eyed 

The spring beneath the tree; 

And thus the dear old man replied, 

The gray-hair’d man of glee:         

‘No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears, 

How merrily it goes! 

’Twill murmur on a thousand years 

And flow as now it flows. 

‘And here, on this delightful day,         

I cannot choose but think 

How oft, a vigorous man, I lay 

Beside this fountain’s brink. 

‘My eyes are dim with childish tears, 

My heart is idly stirr’d,         

For the same sound is in my ears 

Which in those days I heard. 

‘Thus fares it still in our decay: 

And yet the wiser mind 

Mourns less for what Age takes away,         

Than what it leaves behind. 

‘The blackbird amid leafy trees, 

The lark above the hill, 

Let loose their carols when they please, 

Are quiet when they will.         

‘With Nature never do they wage 

A foolish strife; they see 

A happy youth, and their old age 

Is beautiful and free: 

‘But we are press’d by heavy laws;         

And often, glad no more, 

We wear a face of joy, because 

We have been glad of yore. 

‘If there be one who need bemoan 

His kindred laid in earth,         

The household hearts that were his own,—