BOOK SECOND.

SCHOOL-TIME (CONTINUED).

THUS far, O Friend! have we, though On my corporeal frame, so wide appear

leaving much

Unvisited, endeavoured to retrace

The simple ways in which my childhood walked ;

Those chiefly that first led me to the love Of rivers, woods, and fields. The passion yet 5

Was in its birth, sustained as might befall

By nourishment that came unsought; for still

The vacancy between me and those days
Which yet have such self-presence in my

mind,

That, musing on them, often do I seen
Two consciousnesses, conscious of mysel
And of some other Being. A rude mass
Of native rock, left midway in the squa
Of our small market village, was the god
Or centre of these sports; and wha
returned

After long absence, thither I repaired. From week to week, from month to Gone was the old grey stone, and in month, we lived

place

A round of tumult. Duly were our games A smart Assembly-room usurped Prolonged in summer till the day-light

ground

That had been ours. There let the fid

scream,

And be ye happy! Yet, my Friends! know

That more than one of you will th
with me

Of those soft starry nights, and that
Dame

From whom the stone was named,
there had sate,

And watched her table with its hucks

wares

Assiduous, through the length of s

years.

We ran a boisterous course; the ye span round

With giddy motion. But the time proached

That brought with it a regular desire
For calmer pleasures, when the win
forms

Of Nature were collaterally attached
To every scheme of holiday delight
25 And every boyish sport, less grateful
And languidly pursued.
When summer ca

Our pastime was, on bright half-holi- Of the old grey stone, from her scant days,

55

To sweep along the plain of Windermere
With rival oars; and the selected bourne
Was now an Island musical with birds
That sang
and ceased not; now a Sister
Isle

board, supplied.

Hence rustic dinners on the cool green ground,

90

Or in the woods, or by a river's side
Or shady fountain's, while among the
leaves

Beneath the oaks' umbrageous covert, Soft airs were stirring, and the mid-day

-

f vigorous hunger hence corporeal strength

80

nsapped by delicate viands; for, exclude

little weekly stipend, and we lived

towers

ΠΙΟ

In that sequestered valley may be seen,
Both silent and both motionless alike;
Such the deep shelter that is there, and
such

hrough three divisions of the quartered The safeguard for repose and quietness.

year

a penniless poverty. But now to school
rom the half-yearly holidays returned,
e came with weightier purses, that
sufficed

86

o furnish treats more costly than the Dame

Our steeds remounted and the summons given,

115 With whip and spur we through the chauntry flew

In uncouth race, and left the cross-legged knight,

And the stone-abbot, and that single More worthy of a poet's love, a hut, Proud of its own bright fire and sycamore

wren

Which one day sang so sweetly in the

nave

Of the old church, that-though from
recent showers
120
The earth was comfortless, and, touched
by faint

Internal breezes, sobbings of the place
And respirations, from the roofless walls
The shuddering ivy dripped large drops-
yet still

So sweetly 'mid the gloom the invisible
bird

125 Sang to herself, that there I could have made

there

My dwelling-place, and lived for ever Upon a slope surmounted by a plain Of a small bowling-green; beneath us stood

To hear such music. Through the walls we flew

And down the valley, and, a circuit made In wantonness of heart, through rough and smooth 130 We scampered homewards. Oh, ye rocks and streams,

And that still spirit shed from evening air!

Even in this joyous time I sometimes

! A grove, with gleams of water through

the trees

And over the tree-tops; nor did we want !
Refreshment, strawberries and mellow i

cream.

There, while through half an afternoon we played

On the smooth platform, whether sk prevailed

Or happy blunder triumphed, bursts of glee

Made all the mountains ring. But, er nightfall,

When in our pinnace we returned leisure

Over the shadowy lake, and to the beach Of some small island steered our cours with one,

Midway on long Winander's eastern The Minstrel of the Troop, and left h

To love the sun; a boy I loved the sun,
Not as I since have loved him, as a pledge
And surety of our earthly life, a light 180
Which we behold and feel we are alive;
Nor for his bounty to so many worlds---
But for this cause, that I had seen him
lay

Not as our glory and our absolute boast,
But as a succedaneum, and a prop
To our infirmity. No officious slave 215
Art thou of that false secondary power
By which we multiply distinctions, then
Deem that our puny boundaries are
things

His beauty on the morning hills, had That we perceive, and not that we have

Of happiness, my blood appeared to flow For its own pleasure, and I breathed with joy.

And, from like feelings, humble though intense,

To patriotic and domestic love

Analogous, the moon to me was dear;
For I could dream away my purposes,

190

As of a single independent thing.
Hard task, vain hope, to analyse the
mind,

standing to gaze upon her while she If each most obvious and particular

hung

Midway between the hills, as if she knew to other region, but belonged to thee, 195 Tea, appertained by a peculiar right

o thee and thy grey huts, thou one dear Vale!

Those incidental charms which first
attached

Iy heart to rural objects, day by day
frew weaker, and I hasten on to tell 200
fow Nature, intervenient till this time
nd secondary, now at length was sought
or her own sake. But who shall parcel
out

is intellect by geometric rules,

plit like a province into round and For him, in one dear Presence, there square?

205 Tho knows the individual hour in which is habits were first sown, even as a seed?

ho that shall point as with a wand and

exists

ore deeply read in thy own thoughts; Is there a flower, to which he points with to thee

ience appears but what in truth she is,

hand

Too weak to gather it, already love

245

Drawn from love's purest earthly fount Of knowledge, when all knowledge

for him Hath beautified that flower; already And sorrow is not there! The seasons

By its own spirit! All that I beheld
Was dear, and hence to finer influxes
The mind lay open, to a more exact
And close communion. Many are our That whatsoever point they gain, the