And humbled down; oh! then we feel, we feel,
  We know where we have friends.  Ye dreamers, then,
  Forgers of daring tales! we bless you then,
  Impostors, drivellers, dotards, as the ape 525
  Philosophy will call you:  then we feel
  With what, and how great might ye are in league,
  Who make our wish, our power, our thought a deed,
  An empire, a possession,—­ye whom time
  And seasons serve; all Faculties to whom 530
  Earth crouches, the elements are potter’s clay,
  Space like a heaven filled up with northern lights,
  Here, nowhere, there, and everywhere at once.

    Relinquishing this lofty eminence
  For ground, though humbler, not the less a tract 535
  Of the same isthmus, which our spirits cross
  In progress from their native continent
  To earth and human life, the Song might dwell
  On that delightful time of growing youth,
  When craving for the marvellous gives way 540
  To strengthening love for things that we have seen;
  When sober truth and steady sympathies,
  Offered to notice by less daring pens,
  Take firmer hold of us, and words themselves
  Move us with conscious pleasure.

                                   I am sad 545
  At thought of raptures now for ever flown; [R]
  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 now 550
  Dead in my eyes, dead as a theatre
  Fresh emptied of spectators.  Twice five years
  Or less I might have seen, when first my mind
  With conscious pleasure opened to the charm
  Of words in tuneful order, found them sweet 555
  For their own sakes, a passion, and a power;
  And phrases pleased me chosen for delight,
  For pomp, or love.  Oft, in the public roads
  Yet unfrequented, while the morning light
  Was yellowing the hill tops, I went abroad 560
  With a dear friend, [S] and for the better part
  Of two delightful hours we strolled along
  By the still borders of the misty lake, [T]
  Repeating favourite verses with one voice,
  Or conning more, as happy as the birds 565
  That round us chaunted.  Well might we be glad,
  Lifted above the ground by airy fancies,
  More bright than madness or the dreams of wine;
  And, though full oft the objects of our love
  Were false, and in their splendour overwrought, [U] 570
  Yet was there surely then no vulgar power
  Working within us,—­nothing less, in truth,
  Than that most noble attribute of man,
  Though yet untutored and inordinate,
  That wish for something loftier, more