And yet the building stood, as if sustained 280
  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 joys
  In youth, but oh! what happiness to live 285
  When every hour brings palpable access
  Of knowledge, when all knowledge is delight,
  And sorrow is not there!  The seasons came,
  And every season wheresoe’er I moved
  Unfolded transitory qualities, 290
  Which, but for this most watchful power of love,
  Had been neglected; left a register
  Of permanent relations, else unknown. 
  Hence life, and change, and beauty, solitude
  More active even than “best society”—­[T] 295
  Society made sweet as solitude
  By silent inobtrusive sympathies—­
  And gentle agitations of the mind
  From manifold distinctions, difference
  Perceived in things, where, to the unwatchful eye, 300
  No difference is, and hence, from the same source,
  Sublimer joy; for I would walk alone,
  Under the quiet stars, and at that time
  Have felt whate’er there is of power in sound
  To breathe an elevated mood, by form 305
  Or image unprofaned; and I would stand,
  If the night blackened with a coming storm,
  Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are
  The ghostly language of the ancient earth,
  Or make their dim abode in distant winds. 310
  Thence did I drink the visionary power;
  And deem not profitless those fleeting moods
  Of shadowy exultation:  not for this,
  That they are kindred to our purer mind
  And intellectual life; but that the soul, 315
  Remembering how she felt, but what she felt
  Remembering not, retains an obscure sense
  Of possible sublimity, whereto
  With growing faculties she doth aspire,
  With faculties still growing, feeling still 320
  That whatsoever point they gain, they yet
  Have something to pursue.

                                  And not alone,
  ’Mid gloom and tumult, but no less ’mid fair
  And tranquil scenes, that universal power
  And fitness in the latent qualities 325
  And essences of things, by which the mind
  Is moved with feelings of delight, to me
  Came, strengthened with a superadded soul,
  A virtue not its own.  My morning walks
  Were early;—­oft before the hours of school [U] 330
  I travelled round our little lake, [V] five miles
  Of pleasant wandering.  Happy time! more dear
  For this, that one was by my side, a Friend, [W]
  Then passionately loved; with heart how full
  Would he peruse these lines!  For