many years 335
  Have since flowed in between us, and, our minds
  Both silent to each other, at this time
  We live as if those hours had never been. 
  Nor seldom did I lift—­our cottage latch [X]
  Far earlier, ere one smoke-wreath had risen 340
  From human dwelling, or the vernal thrush
  Was audible; and sate among the woods
  Alone upon some jutting eminence, [Y]
  At the first gleam of dawn-light, when the Vale,
  Yet slumbering, lay in utter solitude. 345
  How shall I seek the origin? where find
  Faith in the marvellous things which then I felt? 
  Oft in these moments such a holy calm
  Would overspread my soul, that bodily eyes
  Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw 350
  Appeared like something in myself, a dream,
  A prospect in the mind. [Z]
                    ’Twere long to tell
  What spring and autumn, what the winter snows,
  And what the summer shade, what day and night,
  Evening and morning, sleep and waking, thought 355
  From sources inexhaustible, poured forth
  To feed the spirit of religious love
  In which I walked with Nature.  But let this
  Be not forgotten, that I still retained
  My first creative sensibility; 360
  That by the regular action of the world
  My soul was unsubdued.  A plastic power
  Abode with me; a forming hand, at times
  Rebellious, acting in a devious mood;
  A local spirit of his own, at war 365
  With general tendency, but, for the most,
  Subservient strictly to external things
  With which it communed.  An auxiliar light
  Came from my mind, which on the setting sun
  Bestowed new splendour; the melodious birds, 370
  The fluttering breezes, fountains that run on
  Murmuring so sweetly in themselves, obeyed
  A like dominion, and the midnight storm
  Grew darker in the presence of my eye: 
  Hence my obeisance, my devotion hence, 375
  And hence my transport. 
           Nor should this, perchance,
  Pass unrecorded, that I still had loved
  The exercise and produce of a toil,
  Than analytic industry to me
  More pleasing, and whose character I deem 380
  Is more poetic as resembling more
  Creative agency.  The song would speak
  Of that interminable building reared
  By observation of affinities
  In objects where no brotherhood exists 385
  To passive minds.  My seventeenth year was come;
  And, whether from this habit rooted now
  So deeply in my mind; or from excess
  In the great social principle of life
  Coercing all things into sympathy, 390