<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=539934" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Book First [Introduction-Childhood and School Time]</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">OH there is blessing in this gentle breeze,<br>A visitant that while it fans my cheek<br>Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings<br>From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.<br>Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come<br>To none more grateful than to me; escaped<br>From the vast city, where I long had pined<br>A discontented sojourner: now free,<br>Free as a bird to settle where I will.<br>What dwelling shall receive me? in what vale <br>Shall be my harbour? underneath what grove<br>Shall I take up my home? and what clear stream<br>Shall with its murmur lull me into rest?<br>The earth is all before me. With a heart<br>Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,<br>I look about; and should the chosen guide<br>Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,<br>I cannot miss my way. I breathe again!<br>Trances of thought and mountings of the mind<br>Come fast upon me: it is shaken off, <br>That burthen of my own unnatural self,<br>The heavy weight of many a weary day<br>Not mine, and such as were not made for me.<br>Long months of peace (if such bold word accord<br>With any promises of human life),<br>Long months of ease and undisturbed delight<br>Are mine in prospect; whither shall I turn,<br>By road or pathway, or through trackless field,<br>Up hill or down, or shall some floating thing<br>Upon the river point me out my course? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dear Liberty! Yet what would it avail<br>But for a gift that consecrates the joy?<br>For I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven<br>Was blowing on my body, felt within<br>A correspondent breeze, that gently moved<br>With quickening virtue, but is now become<br>A tempest, a redundant energy,<br>Vexing its own creation. Thanks to both,<br>And their congenial powers, that, while they join<br>In breaking up a long-continued frost, <br>Bring with them vernal promises, the hope<br>Of active days urged on by flying hours,--<br>Days of sweet leisure, taxed with patient thought<br>Abstruse, nor wanting punctual service high,<br>Matins and vespers of harmonious verse!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus far, O Friend! did I, not used to make<br>A present joy the matter of a song,<br>Pour forth that day my soul in measured strains<br>That would not be forgotten, and are here<br>Recorded: to the open fields I told <br>A prophecy: poetic numbers came<br>Spontaneously to clothe in priestly robe<br>A renovated spirit singled out,<br>Such hope was mine, for holy services.<br>My own voice cheered me, and, far more, the mind's<br>Internal echo of the imperfect sound;<br>To both I listened, drawing from them both<br>A cheerful confidence in things to come.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Content and not unwilling now to give<br>A respite to this passion, I paced on <br>With brisk and eager steps; and came, at length,<br>To a green shady place, where down I sate<br>Beneath a tree, slackening my thoughts by choice<br>And settling into gentler happiness.<br>'Twas autumn, and a clear and placid day,<br>With warmth, as much as needed, from a sun<br>Two hours declined towards the west; a day<br>With silver clouds, and sunshine on the grass,<br>And in the sheltered and the sheltering grove<br>A perfect stillness. Many were the thoughts <br>Encouraged and dismissed, till choice was made<br>Of a known Vale, whither my feet should turn,<br>Nor rest till they had reached the very door<br>Of the one cottage which methought I saw.<br>No picture of mere memory ever looked<br>So fair; and while upon the fancied scene<br>I gazed with growing love, a higher power<br>Than Fancy gave assurance of some work<br>Of glory there forthwith to be begun,<br>Perhaps too there performed. Thus long I mused, <br>Nor e'er lost sight of what I mused upon,<br>Save when, amid the stately grove of oaks,<br>Now here, now there, an acorn, from its cup<br>Dislodged, through sere leaves rustled, or at once<br>To the bare earth dropped with a startling sound.<br>From that soft couch I rose not, till the sun<br>Had almost touched the horizon; casting then<br>A backward glance upon the curling cloud<br>Of city smoke, by distance ruralised;<br>Keen as a Truant or a Fugitive, <br>But as a Pilgrim resolute, I took,<br>Even with the chance equipment of that hour,<br>The road that pointed toward the chosen Vale.<br>It was a splendid evening, and my soul<br>Once more made trial of her strength, nor lacked<br>Aeolian visitations; but the harp<br>Was soon defrauded, and the banded host<br>Of harmony dispersed in straggling sounds,<br>And lastly utter silence! 'Be it so;<br>Why think of anything but present good?' <br>So, like a home-bound labourer, I pursued<br>My way beneath the mellowing sun, that shed<br>Mild influence; nor left in me one wish<br>Again to bend the Sabbath of that time<br>To a servile yoke. What need of many words?<br>A pleasant loitering journey, through three days<br>Continued, brought me to my hermitage.<br>I spare to tell of what ensued, the life<br>In common things--the endless store of things,<br>Rare, or at least so seeming, every day <br>Found all about me in one neighbourhood--<br>The self-congratulation, and, from morn<br>To night, unbroken cheerfulness serene.<br>But speedily an earnest longing rose<br>To brace myself to some determined aim,<br>Reading or thinking; either to lay up<br>New stores, or rescue from decay the old<br>By timely interference: and therewith<br>Came hopes still higher, that with outward life<br>I might endue some airy phantasies <br>That had been floating loose about for years,<br>And to such beings temperately deal forth<br>The many feelings that oppressed my heart.<br>That hope hath been discouraged; welcome light<br>Dawns from the east, but dawns to disappear<br>And mock me with a sky that ripens not<br>Into a steady morning: if my mind,<br>Remembering the bold promise of the past,<br>Would gladly grapple with some noble theme,<br>Vain is her wish; where'er she turns she finds <br>Impediments from day to day renewed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And now it would content me to yield up<br>Those lofty hopes awhile, for present gifts<br>Of humbler industry. But, oh, dear Friend!<br>The Poet, gentle creature as he is,<br>Hath, like the Lover, his unruly times;<br>His fits when he is neither sick nor well,<br>Though no distress be near him but his own<br>Unmanageable thoughts: his mind, best pleased<br>While she as duteous as the mother dove <br>Sits brooding, lives not always to that end,<br>But like the innocent bird, hath goadings on<br>That drive her as in trouble through the groves;<br>With me is now such passion, to be blamed<br>No otherwise than as it lasts too long.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When, as becomes a man who would prepare<br>For such an arduous work, I through myself<br>Make rigorous inquisition, the report<br>Is often cheering; for I neither seem<br>To lack that first great gift, the vital soul, <br>Nor general Truths, which are themselves a sort<br>Of Elements and Agents, Under-powers,<br>Subordinate helpers of the living mind:<br>Nor am I naked of external things,<br>Forms, images, nor numerous other aids<br>Of less regard, though won perhaps with toil<br>And needful to build up a Poet's praise.<br>Time, place, and manners do I seek, and these<br>Are found in plenteous store, but nowhere such<br>As may be singled out with steady choice; <br>No little band of yet remembered names<br>Whom I, in perfect confidence, might hope<br>To summon back from lonesome banishment,<br>And make them dwellers in the hearts of men<br>Now living, or to live in future years.<br>Sometimes the ambitious Power of choice, mistaking<br>Proud spring-tide swellings for a regular sea,<br>Will settle on some British theme, some old<br>Romantic tale by Milton left unsung;<br>More often turning to some gentle place <br>Within the groves of Chivalry, I pipe<br>To shepherd swains, or seated harp in hand,<br>Amid reposing knights by a river side<br>Or fountain, listen to the grave reports<br>Of dire enchantments faced and overcome<br>By the strong mind, and tales of warlike feats,<br>Where spear encountered spear, and sword with sword<br>Fought, as if conscious of the blazonry<br>That the shield bore, so glorious was the strife;<br>Whence inspiration for a song that winds <br>Through ever-changing scenes of votive quest<br>Wrongs to redress, harmonious tribute paid<br>To patient courage and unblemished truth,<br>To firm devotion, zeal unquenchable,<br>And Christian meekness hallowing faithful loves.<br>Sometimes, more sternly moved, I would relate<br>How vanquished Mithridates northward passed,<br>And, hidden in the cloud of years, became<br>Odin, the Father of a race by whom<br>Perished the Roman Empire: how the friends <br>And followers of Sertorius, out of Spain<br>Flying, found shelter in the Fortunate Isles,<br>And left their usages, their arts and laws,<br>To disappear by a slow gradual death,<br>To dwindle and to perish one by one,<br>Starved in those narrow bounds: but not the soul<br>Of Liberty, which fifteen hundred years<br>Survived, and, when the European came<br>With skill and power that might not be withstood,<br>Did, like a pestilence, maintain its hold <br>And wasted down by glorious death that race<br>Of natural heroes: or I would record<br>How, in tyrannic times, some high-souled man,<br>Unnamed among the chronicles of kings,<br>Suffered in silence for Truth's sake: or tell,<br>How that one Frenchman, through continued force<br>Of meditation on the inhuman deeds<br>Of those who conquered first the Indian Isles,<br>Went single in his ministry across<br>The Ocean; not to comfort the oppressed, <br>But, like a thirsty wind, to roam about<br>Withering the Oppressor: how Gustavus sought<br>Help at his need in Dalecarlia's mines:<br>How Wallace fought for Scotland; left the name<br>Of Wallace to be found, like a wild flower,<br>All over his dear Country; left the deeds<br>Of Wallace, like a family of Ghosts,<br>To people the steep rocks and river banks,<br>Her natural sanctuaries, with a local soul<br>Of independence and stern liberty. <br>Sometimes it suits me better to invent<br>A tale from my own heart, more near akin<br>To my own passions and habitual thoughts;<br>Some variegated story, in the main<br>Lofty, but the unsubstantial structure melts<br>Before the very sun that brightens it,<br>Mist into air dissolving! Then a wish,<br>My last and favourite aspiration, mounts<br>With yearning toward some philosophic song<br>Of Truth that cherishes our daily life; <br>With meditations passionate from deep<br>Recesses in man's heart, immortal verse<br>Thoughtfully fitted to the Orphean lyre;<br>But from this awful burthen I full soon<br>Take refuge and beguile myself with trust<br>That mellower years will bring a riper mind<br>And clearer insight. Thus my days are past<br>In contradiction; with no skill to part<br>Vague longing, haply bred by want of power,<br>From paramount impulse not to be withstood, <br>A timorous capacity, from prudence,<br>From circumspection, infinite delay.<br>Humility and modest awe, themselves<br>Betray me, serving often for a cloak<br>To a more subtle selfishness; that now<br>Locks every function up in blank reserve,<br>Now dupes me, trusting to an anxious eye<br>That with intrusive restlessness beats off<br>Simplicity and self-presented truth.<br>Ah! better far than this, to stray about <br>Voluptuously through fields and rural walks,<br>And ask no record of the hours, resigned<br>To vacant musing, unreproved neglect<br>Of all things, and deliberate holiday.<br>Far better never to have heard the name<br>Of zeal and just ambition, than to live<br>Baffled and plagued by a mind that every hour<br>Turns recreant to her task; takes heart again,<br>Then feels immediately some hollow thought<br>Hang like an interdict upon her hopes. <br>This is my lot; for either still I find<br>Some imperfection in the chosen theme,<br>Or see of absolute accomplishment<br>Much wanting, so much wanting, in myself,<br>That I recoil and droop, and seek repose<br>In listlessness from vain perplexity,<br>Unprofitably travelling toward the grave,<br>Like a false steward who hath much received<br>And renders nothing back.<br>Was it for this<br>That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved <br>To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song,<br>And, from his alder shades and rocky falls,<br>And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice<br>That flowed along my dreams? For this, didst thou,<br>O Derwent! winding among grassy holms<br>Where I was looking on, a babe in arms,<br>Make ceaseless music that composed my thoughts<br>To more than infant softness, giving me<br>Amid the fretful dwellings of mankind<br>A foretaste, a dim earnest, of the calm <br>That Nature breathes among the hills and groves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When he had left the mountains and received<br>On his smooth breast the shadow of those towers<br>That yet survive, a shattered monument<br>Of feudal sway, the bright blue river passed<br>Along the margin of our terrace walk;<br>A tempting playmate whom we dearly loved.<br>Oh, many a time have I, a five years' child,<br>In a small mill-race severed from his stream,<br>Made one long bathing of a summer's day; <br>Basked in the sun, and plunged and basked again<br>Alternate, all a summer's day, or scoured<br>The sandy fields, leaping through flowery groves<br>Of yellow ragwort; or, when rock and hill,<br>The woods, and distant Skiddaw's lofty height,<br>Were bronzed with deepest radiance, stood alone<br>Beneath the sky, as if I had been born<br>On Indian plains, and from my mother's hut<br>Had run abroad in wantonness, to sport<br>A naked savage, in the thunder shower. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up<br>Fostered alike by beauty and by fear:<br>Much favoured in my birth-place, and no less<br>In that beloved Vale to which erelong<br>We were transplanted;--there were we let loose<br>For sports of wider range. Ere I had told<br>Ten birth-days, when among the mountain slopes<br>Frost, and the breath of frosty wind, had snapped<br>The last autumnal crocus, 'twas my joy<br>With store of springes o'er my shoulder hung <br>To range the open heights where woodcocks run<br>Along the smooth green turf. Through half the night,<br>Scudding away from snare to snare, I plied<br>That anxious visitation;--moon and stars<br>Were shining o'er my head. I was alone,<br>And seemed to be a trouble to the peace<br>That dwelt among them. Sometimes it befell<br>In these night wanderings, that a strong desire<br>O'erpowered my better reason, and the bird<br>Which was the captive of another's toil <br>Became my prey; and when the deed was done<br>I heard among the solitary hills<br>Low breathings coming after me, and sounds<br>Of undistinguishable motion, steps<br>Almost as silent as the turf they trod.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor less, when spring had warmed the cultured Vale,<br>Moved we as plunderers where the mother-bird<br>Had in high places built her lodge; though mean<br>Our object and inglorious, yet the end<br>Was not ignoble. Oh! when I have hung <br>Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass<br>And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock<br>But ill sustained, and almost (so it seemed)<br>Suspended by the blast that blew amain,<br>Shouldering the naked crag, oh, at that time<br>While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,<br>With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind<br>Blow through my ear! the sky seemed not a sky<br>Of earth--and with what motion moved the clouds!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows <br>Like harmony in music; there is a dark<br>Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles<br>Discordant elements, makes them cling together<br>In one society. How strange, that all<br>The terrors, pains, and early miseries,<br>Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused<br>Within my mind, should e'er have borne a part,<br>And that a needful part, in making up<br>The calm existence that is mine when I<br>Am worthy of myself! Praise to the end! <br>Thanks to the means which Nature deigned to employ;<br>Whether her fearless visitings, or those<br>That came with soft alarm, like hurtless light<br>Opening the peaceful clouds; or she would use<br>Severer interventions, ministry<br>More palpable, as best might suit her aim.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One summer evening (led by her) I found<br>A little boat tied to a willow tree<br>Within a rocky cave, its usual home.<br>Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in <br>Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth<br>And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice<br>Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;<br>Leaving behind her still, on either side,<br>Small circles glittering idly in the moon,<br>Until they melted all into one track<br>Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,<br>Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point<br>With an unswerving line, I fixed my view<br>Upon the summit of a craggy ridge, <br>The horizon's utmost boundary; far above<br>Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.<br>She was an elfin pinnace; lustily<br>I dipped my oars into the silent lake,<br>And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat<br>Went heaving through the water like a swan;<br>When, from behind that craggy steep till then<br>The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,<br>As if with voluntary power instinct,<br>Upreared its head. I struck and struck again, <br>And growing still in stature the grim shape<br>Towered up between me and the stars, and still,<br>For so it seemed, with purpose of its own<br>And measured motion like a living thing,<br>Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,<br>And through the silent water stole my way<br>Back to the covert of the willow tree;<br>There in her mooring-place I left my bark,--<br>And through the meadows homeward went, in grave<br>And serious mood; but after I had seen <br>That spectacle, for many days, my brain<br>Worked with a dim and undetermined sense<br>Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts<br>There hung a darkness, call it solitude<br>Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes<br>Remained, no pleasant images of trees,<br>Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;<br>But huge and mighty forms, that do not live<br>Like living men, moved slowly through the mind<br>By day, and were a trouble to my dreams. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!<br>Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought<br>That givest to forms and images a breath<br>And everlasting motion, not in vain<br>By day or star-light thus from my first dawn<br>Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me<br>The passions that build up our human soul;<br>Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,<br>But with high objects, with enduring things--<br>With life and nature--purifying thus <br>The elements of feeling and of thought,<br>And sanctifying, by such discipline,<br>Both pain and fear, until we recognise<br>A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.<br>Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me<br>With stinted kindness. In November days,<br>When vapours rolling down the valley made<br>A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods,<br>At noon and 'mid the calm of summer nights,<br>When, by the margin of the trembling lake, <br>Beneath the gloomy hills homeward I went<br>In solitude, such intercourse was mine;<br>Mine was it in the fields both day and night,<br>And by the waters, all the summer long.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And in the frosty season, when the sun<br>Was set, and visible for many a mile<br>The cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom,<br>I heeded not their summons: happy time<br>It was indeed for all of us--for me<br>It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud <br>The village clock tolled six,--I wheeled about,<br>Proud and exulting like an untired horse<br>That cares not for his home. All shod with steel,<br>We hissed along the polished ice in games<br>Confederate, imitative of the chase<br>And woodland pleasures,--the resounding horn,<br>The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare.<br>So through the darkness and the cold we flew,<br>And not a voice was idle; with the din<br>Smitten, the precipices rang aloud; <br>The leafless trees and every icy crag<br>Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills<br>Into the tumult sent an alien sound<br>Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars<br>Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west<br>The orange sky of evening died away.<br>Not seldom from the uproar I retired<br>Into a silent bay, or sportively<br>Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,<br>To cut across the reflex of a star <br>That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed<br>Upon the glassy plain; and oftentimes,<br>When we had given our bodies to the wind,<br>And all the shadowy banks on either side<br>Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still<br>The rapid line of motion, then at once<br>Have I, reclining back upon my heels,<br>Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs<br>Wheeled by me--even as if the earth had rolled<br>With visible motion her diurnal round! <br>Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,<br>Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched<br>Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ye Presences of Nature in the sky<br>And on the earth! Ye Visions of the hills!<br>And Souls of lonely places! can I think<br>A vulgar hope was yours when ye employed<br>Such ministry, when ye, through many a year<br>Haunting me thus among my boyish sports,<br>On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills, <br>Impressed, upon all forms, the characters<br>Of danger or desire; and thus did make<br>The surface of the universal earth,<br>With triumph and delight, with hope and fear,<br>Work like a sea?<br>Not uselessly employed,<br>Might I pursue this theme through every change<br>Of exercise and play, to which the year<br>Did summon us in his delightful round.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We were a noisy crew; the sun in heaven<br>Beheld not vales more beautiful than ours;<br>Nor saw a band in happiness and joy <br>Richer, or worthier of the ground they trod.<br>I could record with no reluctant voice<br>The woods of autumn, and their hazel bowers<br>With milk-white clusters hung; the rod and line,<br>True symbol of hope's foolishness, whose strong<br>And unreproved enchantment led us on<br>By rocks and pools shut out from every star,<br>All the green summer, to forlorn cascades<br>Among the windings hid of mountain brooks.<br>--Unfading recollections! at this hour <br>The heart is almost mine with which I felt,<br>From some hill-top on sunny afternoons,<br>The paper kite high among fleecy clouds<br>Pull at her rein like an impetuous courser;<br>Or, from the meadows sent on gusty days,<br>Beheld her breast the wind, then suddenly<br>Dashed headlong, and rejected by the storm.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ye lowly cottages wherein we dwelt,<br>A ministration of your own was yours;<br>Can I forget you, being as you were <br>So beautiful among the pleasant fields<br>In which ye stood? or can I here forget<br>The plain and seemly countenance with which<br>Ye dealt out your plain comforts? Yet had ye<br>Delights and exultations of your own.<br>Eager and never weary we pursued<br>Our home-amusements by the warm peat-fire<br>At evening, when with pencil, and smooth slate<br>In square divisions parcelled out and all<br>With crosses and with cyphers scribbled o'er, <br>We schemed and puzzled, head opposed to head<br>In strife too humble to be named in verse:<br>Or round the naked table, snow-white deal,<br>Cherry or maple, sate in close array,<br>And to the combat, Loo or Whist, led on<br>A thick-ribbed army; not, as in the world,<br>Neglected and ungratefully thrown by<br>Even for the very service they had wrought,<br>But husbanded through many a long campaign.<br>Uncouth assemblage was it, where no few <br>Had changed their functions: some, plebeian cards<br>Which Fate, beyond the promise of their birth,<br>Had dignified, and called to represent<br>The persons of departed potentates.<br>Oh, with what echoes on the board they fell!<br>Ironic diamonds,--clubs, hearts, diamonds, spades,<br>A congregation piteously akin!<br>Cheap matter offered they to boyish wit,<br>Those sooty knaves, precipitated down<br>With scoffs and taunts, like Vulcan out of heaven: <br>The paramount ace, a moon in her eclipse,<br>Queens gleaming through their splendour's last decay,<br>And monarchs surly at the wrongs sustained<br>By royal visages. Meanwhile abroad<br>Incessant rain was falling, or the frost<br>Raged bitterly, with keen and silent tooth;<br>And, interrupting oft that eager game,<br>From under Esthwaite's splitting fields of ice<br>The pent-up air, struggling to free itself,<br>Gave out to meadow grounds and hills a loud <br>Protracted yelling, like the noise of wolves<br>Howling in troops along the Bothnic Main.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor, sedulous as I have been to trace<br>How Nature by extrinsic passion first<br>Peopled the mind with forms sublime or fair,<br>And made me love them, may I here omit<br>How other pleasures have been mine, and joys<br>Of subtler origin; how I have felt,<br>Not seldom even in that tempestuous time,<br>Those hallowed and pure motions of the sense <br>Which seem, in their simplicity, to own<br>An intellectual charm; that calm delight<br>Which, if I err not, surely must belong<br>To those first-born affinities that fit<br>Our new existence to existing things,<br>And, in our dawn of being, constitute<br>The bond of union between life and joy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yes, I remember when the changeful earth,<br>And twice five summers on my mind had stamped<br>The faces of the moving year, even then <br>I held unconscious intercourse with beauty<br>Old as creation, drinking in a pure<br>Organic pleasure from the silver wreaths<br>Of curling mist, or from the level plain<br>Of waters coloured by impending clouds.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The sands of Westmoreland, the creeks and bays<br>Of Cumbria's rocky limits, they can tell<br>How, when the Sea threw off his evening shade,<br>And to the shepherd's hut on distant hills<br>Sent welcome notice of the rising moon, <br>How I have stood, to fancies such as these<br>A stranger, linking with the spectacle<br>No conscious memory of a kindred sight,<br>And bringing with me no peculiar sense<br>Of quietness or peace; yet have I stood,<br>Even while mine eye hath moved o'er many a league<br>Of shining water, gathering as it seemed,<br>Through every hair-breadth in that field of light,<br>New pleasure like a bee among the flowers.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus oft amid those fits of vulgar joy <br>Which, through all seasons, on a child's pursuits<br>Are prompt attendants, 'mid that giddy bliss<br>Which, like a tempest, works along the blood<br>And is forgotten; even then I felt<br>Gleams like the flashing of a shield;--the earth<br>And common face of Nature spake to me<br>Rememberable things; sometimes, 'tis true,<br>By chance collisions and quaint accidents<br>(Like those ill-sorted unions, work supposed<br>Of evil-minded fairies), yet not vain <br>Nor profitless, if haply they impressed<br>Collateral objects and appearances,<br>Albeit lifeless then, and doomed to sleep<br>Until maturer seasons called them forth<br>To impregnate and to elevate the mind.<br>--And if the vulgar joy by its own weight<br>Wearied itself out of the memory,<br>The scenes which were a witness of that joy<br>Remained in their substantial lineaments<br>Depicted on the brain, and to the eye <br>Were visible, a daily sight; and thus<br>By the impressive discipline of fear,<br>By pleasure and repeated happiness,<br>So frequently repeated, and by force<br>Of obscure feelings representative<br>Of things forgotten, these same scenes so bright,<br>So beautiful, so majestic in themselves,<br>Though yet the day was distant, did become<br>Habitually dear, and all their forms<br>And changeful colours by invisible links <br>Were fastened to the affections.<br>I began<br>My story early--not misled, I trust,<br>By an infirmity of love for days<br>Disowned by memory--ere the breath of spring<br>Planting my snowdrops among winter snows:<br>Nor will it seem to thee, O Friend! so prompt<br>In sympathy, that I have lengthened out<br>With fond and feeble tongue a tedious tale.<br>Meanwhile, my hope has been, that I might fetch<br>Invigorating thoughts from former years; <br>Might fix the wavering balance of my mind,<br>And haply meet reproaches too, whose power<br>May spur me on, in manhood now mature<br>To honourable toil. Yet should these hopes<br>Prove vain, and thus should neither I be taught<br>To understand myself, nor thou to know<br>With better knowledge how the heart was framed<br>Of him thou lovest; need I dread from thee<br>Harsh judgments, if the song be loth to quit<br>Those recollected hours that have the charm <br>Of visionary things, those lovely forms<br>And sweet sensations that throw back our life,<br>And almost make remotest infancy<br>A visible scene, on which the sun is shining?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One end at least hath been attained; my mind<br>Hath been revived, and if this genial mood<br>Desert me not, forthwith shall be brought down<br>Through later years the story of my life.<br>The road lies plain before me;--'tis a theme<br>Single and of determined bounds; and hence <br>I choose it rather at this time, than work<br>Of ampler or more varied argument,<br>Where I might be discomfited and lost:<br>And certain hopes are with me, that to thee<br>This labour will be welcome, honoured Friend!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Wordsworth">William Wordsworth</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=539934" data-title="Book First [Introduction-Childhood and School Time] de William Wordsworth" data-description="OH there is blessing in this gentle breeze, A visitant that while it fans my cheek Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings From the green fields, and from yon azure sky. Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come To none more grateful th..."></div> </div> </div>

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