Though yet untutored and inordinate,
That wish for something loftier, more
adorned,
575
Than is the common aspect, daily garb,
Of human life. What wonder, then, if
sounds

Almost to tears I sometimes could be sad
To think of, to read over, many a page,
Poems withal of name, which at that time
Did never fail to entrance me, and are
550
Dead in my eyes, dead as a theatre
Fresh emptied of spectators. Twice five Of exultation echoed through the groves
For, images, and sentiments, and words,

now

years

!

Or less I might have seen, when first my And everything encountered or pursued mind In that delicious world of poesy, 581 With conscious pleasure opened to the Kept holiday, a never-ending show, charm With music, incense, festival, and flowers!

For pomp, or love. Oft, in the public A daily wanderer among woods and fields roads With living Nature hath been intimate,

590

Yet unfrequented, while the morning Not only in that raw unpractised time light Is stirred to ecstasy, as others are, By glittering verse; but further, doth receive,

Was yellowing the hill tops, I went abroad

560 With a dear friend, and for the better part

Of two delightful hours we strolled along
By the still borders of the misty lake,
Repeating favourite verses with one voice,
Or conning more, as happy as the birds
That round us chaunted. Well might we
be glad,

566

In measure only dealt out to himself,
Knowledge and increase of enduring joy
From the great Nature that exists in
works

595

Of mighty Poets. Visionary power
Attends the motions of the viewless winds,
Embodied in the mystery of words:
There, darkness makes abode, and all the
host

Lifted above the ground by airy fancies, More bright than madness or the dreams Of shadowy things work endless changes, of wine;

--there,

599

And, though full oft the objects of our As in a mansion like their proper home, Even forms and substances are circumfused

love

Were false, and in their splendour overwrought,

570 Yet was there surely then no vulgar

power

Working within us,-nothing less, in truth,

Than that most noble attribute of man,

BOOK SIXTH.

CAMBRIDGE AND THE ALPS.

THE leaves were fading when to Esth-Yet independent study seemed a course

By such a daring thought, that I might leave 55

Some monument behind me which pure hearts

Should reverence. The instinctive humbleness,

Maintained even by the very name and
thought

Of printed books and authorship, began
To melt away; and further, the dread

awe

60

Foot-bound uplooking at this lovely tree
Beneath a frosty moon. The hemisphere
Of magic fiction, verse of mine perchance
May never tread; but scarcely Spenser's
self

Could have more tranquil visions in his
youth,
90

Or could more bright appearances create
Of human forms with superhuman powers,
Than I beheld loitering on calm clear
nights

Of mighty names was softened down and Alone, beneath this fairy work of earth.

seemed

On the vague reading of a truant youth "Twere idle to descant. My inner judg

ment

96 Not seldom differed from my taste in books,

As if it appertained to another mind,

most

All winter long, whenever free to And yet the books which then I valued choose, Did I by night frequent the College Are dearest to me now; for, having

groves

And tributary walks; the last, and oft The only one, who had been lingering there

scanned,

100

Not heedlessly, the laws, and watched the forms

Of Nature, in that knowledge I possessed

Through hours of silence, till the porter's A standard, often usefully applied,

green

Even when unconsciously, to things re

Yet may we not entirely overlook 115

With clustering ivy, and the lightsome The pleasure gathered from the rudi

twigs

ments

And outer spray profusely tipped with Of geometric science. Though advanced

seeds

That hung in yellow tassels, while the air
Stirred them, not voiceless. Often have
I stood

85

In these enquiries, with regret I speak, No farther than the threshold, there I found

Both elevation and composed delight:

121

161

With Indian awe and wonder, ignorance With Poets ever. Mighty is the charm
Of those abstractions to a mind beset
With images, and haunted by herself,
And specially delightful unto me
Was that clear synthesis built up aloft
So gracefully; even then when it ap-
peared

pleased With its own struggles, did I meditate On the relation those abstractions bear To Nature's laws, and by what process led, Those immaterial agents bowed their heads 125

Duly to serve the mind of earth-born man; From star to star, from kindred sphere to sphere,

From system on to system without end.

More frequently from the same source
I drew

A pleasure quiet and profound, a sense
Of permanent and universal sway, 131
And paramount belief; there, recognised
A type, for finite natures, of the one
Supreme Existence, the surpassing life
Which-to the boundaries of space and
time,
135

Of melancholy space and doleful time,
Superior, and incapable of change,
Nor touched by welterings of passion—is,
And hath the name of, God. Transcen-
dent peace

And silence did await upon these thoughts
That were a frequent comfort to my
youth.
141

'Tis told by one whom stormy waters threw,

With fellow-sufferers by the shipwreck spared,

146

Upon a desert coast, that having brought
To land a single volume, saved by chance,
A treatise of Geometry, he wont,
Although of food and clothing destitute,
And beyond common wretchedness de-
pressed,

To part from company and take this book
(Then first a self-taught pupil in its
truths)
150

To spots remote, and draw his diagrams
With a long staff upon the sand, and thus
Did oft beguile his sorrow, and almost
Forget his feeling: so (if like effect
From the same cause produced, 'mid
outward things

155

So different, may rightly be compared),
So was it then with me, and so will be

That streamlet whose blue current works Given out while mid-day heat oppressed

Restored to me such absence that she And o'er the Border Beacon, and the seemed

A gift then first bestowed. The varied Of naked pools, and common crags that

Or stormy Cross-fell, snatches he might Confusion, and I seem to plant thee there.

Have seen us side by side, when, having The present, with us in the times to come.

From the far-stretching landscape, by Share with us thy fresh spirits, whether

I, too, have been a wanderer; but, alas! Catching from tufts of grass and hare- How different the fate of different men. Though mutually unknown, yea, nursed