Ye dreamers, then,

Forgers of lawless tales, we bless you then –

Impostors, drivellers, dotards, as the ape

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

Earth crouches, th' elements are potter's clay,

Space like a heaven filled up with northern lights,

Here, nowhere, there, and everywhere at once.

 

It might demand a more impassioned strain

To tell of later pleasures linked to these,

A tract of the same isthmus which we cross

In progress from our native continent

To earth and human life – I mean to speak

Of that delightful time of growing youth

When cravings for the marvellous relent,

And we begin to love what we have seen;

And sober truth, experience, sympathy,

Take stronger hold of us; and words themselves

Move us with conscious pleasure.

 

I am sad

At thought of raptures now for ever flown,

Even unto 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

Dead in my eyes as is a theatre

Fresh emptied of spectators. Thirteen years,

Or haply less, I might have seen when first

My ears began to open to the charm

Of words in tuneful order, found them sweet

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 hilltops, with that dear friend

(The same whom I have mentioned heretofore)

I went abroad, and for the better part

Of two delightful hours we strolled along

By the still borders of the misty lake

Repeating favorite verses with one voice,

Or conning more, as happy as the birds

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,

Yet surely at such time no vulgar power

Was working in us, nothing less in truth

Than that most noble attribute of man –

Though yet untutored and inordinate –

That wish for something loftier, more adorned,

Than is the common aspect, daily garb,

Of human life. What wonder then if sounds

Of exultation echoed through the groves –

For images, and sentiments, and words,

And every thing with which we had to do

In that delicious world of poesy,

Kept holiday, a never-ending show,

With music, incense, festival, and flowers!

 

Here must I pause: this only will I add

From heart-experience, and in humblest sense

Of modesty, that he who in his youth

A wanderer among the woods and fields

With living Nature hath been intimate,

Not only in that raw unpractised time

Is stirred to ecstasy, as others are,

By glittering verse, but he doth furthermore,

In measure only dealt out to himself,

Receive enduring touches of deep joy

From the great Nature that exists in works

Of mighty poets. Visionary power

Attends upon the motions of the winds

Embodied in the mystery of words;

There darkness makes abode, and all the host

Of shadowy things do work their changes there

As in a mansion like their proper home.

Even forms and substances are circumfused

By that transparent veil with light divine,

And through the turnings intricate of verse

Present themselves as objects recognised

In flashes, and with a glory scarce their own.

 

Thus far a scanty record is deduced

Of what I owed to books in early life;

Their later influence yet remains untold,

But as this work was taking in my thoughts

Proportions that seemed larger than had first

Been meditated, I was indisposed

To any further progress at a time

When these acknowledgements were left unpaid.

 

Book Sixth

Cambridge and the Alps

The leaves were yellow when to Furness Fells,

The haunt of shepherds, and to cottage life

I bade adieu, and, one among the flock

Who by that season are convened, like birds

Trooping together at the fowler's lure,

Went back to Granta's cloisters – not so fond

Or eager, though as gay and undepressed

In spirit, as when I thence had taken flight

A few short months before. I turned my face

Without repining from the mountain pomp

Of autumn and its beauty (entered in

With calmer lakes and louder streams); and you,

Frank-hearted maids of rocky Cumberland,

You and your not unwelcome days of mirth

I quitted, and your nights of revelry,

And in my own unlovely cell sate down

In lightsome mood – such privilege has youth,

That cannot take long leave of pleasant thoughts.

 

We need not linger o'er the ensuing time,

But let me add at once that now, the bonds

Of indolent and vague society

Relaxing in their hold, I lived henceforth

More to myself, read more, reflected more,

Felt more, and settled daily into habits

More promising. Two winters may be passed

Without a separate notice; many books

Were read in process of this time – devoured,

Tasted or skimmed, or studiously perused –

Yet with no settled plan. I was detached

Internally from academic cares,

From every hope of prowess and reward,

And wished to be a lodger in that house

Of letters, and no more – and should have been

Even such, but for some personal concerns

That hung about me in my own despite

Perpetually, no heavy weight, but still

A baffling and a hindrance, a controul

Which made the thought of planning for myself

A course of independent study seem

An act of disobedience towards them

Who loved me, proud rebellion and unkind.

This bastard virtue – rather let it have

A name it more deserves, this cowardise –

Gave treacherous sanction to that over-love

Of freedom planted in me from the very first,

And indolence, by force of which I turned

From regulations even of my own

As from restraints and bonds. And who can tell,

Who knows what thus may have been gained, both then

And at a later season, or preserved –

What love of Nature, what original strength

Of contemplation, what intuitive truths,

The deepest and the best, and what research

Unbiassed, unbewildered, and unawed?

 

The poet's soul was with me at that time,

Sweet meditations, the still overflow

Of happiness and truth. A thousand hopes

Were mine, a thousand tender dreams, of which

No few have since been realized, and some

Do yet remain, hopes for my future life.

Four years and thirty, told this very week,

Have I been now a sojourner on earth,

And yet the morning gladness is not gone

Which then was in my mind. Those were the days

Which also first encouraged me to trust

With firmness, hitherto but lightly touched

With such a daring thought, that I might leave

Some monument behind me which pure hearts

Should reverence. The instinctive humbleness,

Upheld even by the very name and thought

Of printed books and authorship, began

To melt away; and further, the dread awe

Of mighty names was softened down, and seemed

Approachable, admitting fellowship

Of modest sympathy. Such aspect now,

Though not familiarly, my mind put on;

I loved and I enjoyed – that was my chief

And ruling business, happy in the strength

And loveliness of imagery and thought.

 

All winter long, whenever free to take

My choice, did I at nights frequent our groves

And tributary walks – the last, and oft

The only one, who had been lingering there

Through hours of silence till the porter's bell,

A punctual follower on the stroke of nine,

Rang with its blunt unceremonious voice,

Inexorable summons. Lofty elms,

Inviting shades of opportune recess,

Did give composure to a neighbourhood

Unpeaceful in itself. A single tree

There was, no doubt yet standing there, an ash,

With sinuous trunk, boughs exquisitely wreathed:

Up from the ground and almost to the top

The trunk and master branches everywhere

Were green with ivy, and the lightsome twigs

And outer spray profusely tipped with seeds

That hung in yellow tassels and festoons,

Moving or still – a favorite trimmed out

By Winter for himself, as if in pride,

And with outlandish grace. Oft have I stood

Foot-bound uplooking at this lovely tree

Beneath a frosty moon. The hemisphere

Of magic fiction, verse of mine perhaps

May never tread, but scarcely Spenser's self

Could have more tranquil visions in his youth,

More bright appearances could scarcely see

Of human forms and superhuman powers,

Than I beheld standing on winter nights

Alone beneath this fairy work of earth.

 

'Twould be a waste of labour to detail

The rambling studies of a truant youth –

Which further may be easily divined,

What, and what kind they were. My inner knowledge

(This barely will I note) was oft in depth

And delicacy like another mind,

Sequestered from my outward taste in books –

And yet the books which then I loved the most

Are dearest to me now; for, being versed

In living Nature, I had there a guide

Which opened frequently my eyes, else shut,

A standard which was usefully applied,

Even when unconsciously, to other things

Which less I understood. In general terms,

I was a better judge of thoughts than words,

Misled as to these latter not alone

By common inexperience of youth,

But by the trade in classic niceties,

Delusion to young scholars incident –

And old ones also – by that overprized

And dangerous craft of picking phrases out

From languages that want the living voice

To make of them a nature to the heart,

To tell us what is passion, what is truth,

What reason, what simplicity and sense.

 

Yet must I not entirely overlook

The pleasure gathered from the elements

Of geometric science. I had stepped

In these inquiries but a little way,

No farther than the threshold – with regret

Sincere I mention this – but there I found

Enough to exalt, to chear me and compose.

With Indian awe and wonder, ignorance

Which even was cherished, did I meditate

Upon the alliance of those simple, pure

Proportions and relations, with the frame

And laws of Nature – how they could become

Herein a leader to the human mind –

And made endeavours frequent to detect

The process by dark guesses of my own.

Yet from this source more frequently I drew

A pleasure calm and deeper, a still sense

Of permanent and universal sway

And paramount endowment in the mind,

An image not unworthy of the one

Surpassing life, which – out of space and time,

Nor touched by welterings of passion – is,

And hath the name of, God. Transcendent peace

And silence did await upon these thoughts

That were a frequent comfort to my youth.

 

And as I have read of one by shipwreck thrown

With fellow sufferers whom the waves had spared

Upon a region uninhabited,

An island of the deep, who having brought

To land a single volume and no more –

A treatise of geometry – was used,

Although of food and clothing destitute,

And beyond common wretchedness depressed,

To part from company and take this book,

Then first a self-taught pupil in those truths,

To spots remote and corners of the isle

By the seaside, and draw his diagrams

With a long stick upon the sand, and thus

Did oft beguile his sorrow, and almost

Forget his feeling: even so – if things

Producing like effect from outward cause

So different may rightly be compared –

So was it with me then, and so will be

With poets ever. Mighty is the charm

Of those abstractions to a mind beset

With images, and haunted by itself,

And specially delightful unto me

Was that clear synthesis built up aloft

So gracefully, even then when it appeared

No more than as a plaything, or a toy

Embodied to the sense – not what it is

In verity, an independent world

Created out of pure intelligence.

 

Such dispositions then were mine, almost

Through grace of heaven and inborn tenderness.

And not to leave the picture of that time

Imperfect, with these habits I must rank

A melancholy, from humours of the blood

In part, and partly taken up, that loved

A pensive sky, sad days, and piping winds,

The twilight more than dawn, autumn than spring –

A treasured and luxurious gloom of choice

And inclination mainly, and the mere

Redundancy of youth's contentedness.

Add unto this a multitude of hours

Pilfered away by what the bard who sang

Of the enchanter Indolence hath called

›Good-natured lounging‹, and behold a map

Of my collegiate life: far less intense

Than duty called for, or, without regard

To duty, might have sprung up of itself

By change of accidents; or even – to speak

Without unkindness – in another place.

 

In summer among distant nooks I roved –

Dovedale, or Yorkshire dales, or through bye-tracts

Of my own native region – and was blest

Between those sundry wanderings with a joy

Above all joys, that seemed another morn

Risen on mid-noon: the presence, friend, I mean

Of that sole sister, she who hath been long

Thy treasure also, thy true friend and mine,

Now after separation desolate

Restored to me – such absence that she seemed

A gift then first bestowed. The gentle banks

Of Emont, hitherto unnamed in song,

And that monastic castle, on a flat,

Low-standing by the margin of the stream,

A mansion not unvisited of old

By Sidney, where, in sight of our Helvellyn,

Some snatches he might pen for aught we know

Of his Arcadia, by fraternal love

Inspired – that river and that mouldering dome

Have seen us sit in many a summer hour,

My sister and myself, when, having climbed

In danger through some window's open space,

We looked abroad, or on the turret's head

Lay listening to the wild-flowers and the grass

As they gave out their whispers to the wind.

Another maid there was, who also breathed

A gladness o'er that season, then to me

By her exulting outside look of youth

And placid under-countenance first endeared –

That other spirit, Coleridge, who is now

So near to us, that meek confiding heart,

So reverenced by us both. O'er paths and fields

In all that neighbourhood, through narrow lanes

Of eglantine, and through the shady woods,

And o'er the Border Beacon and the waste

Of naked pools and common crags that lay

Exposed on the bare fell, was scattered love –

A spirit of pleasure, and youth's golden gleam.

O friend, we had not seen thee at that time,

And yet a power is on me and a strong

Confusion, and I seem to plant thee there.

Far art thou wandered now in search of health,

And milder breezes – melancholy lot –

But thou art with us, with us in the past,

The present, with us in the times to come.

There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair,

No languor, no dejection, no dismay,

No absence scarcely can there be, for those

Who love as we do. Speed thee well! divide

Thy pleasure with us; thy returning strength,

Receive it daily as a joy of ours;

Share with us thy fresh spirits, whether gift

Of gales Etesian or of loving thoughts.

 

I too have been a wanderer, but, alas,

How different is the fate of different men,

Though twins almost in genius and in mind.

Unknown unto each other, yea, and breathing

As if in different elements, we were framed

To bend at last to the same discipline,

Predestined, if two beings ever were,

To seek the same delights, and have one health,

One happiness. Throughout this narrative,

Else sooner ended, I have known full well

For whom I thus record the birth and growth

Of gentleness, simplicity, and truth,

And joyous loves that hallow innocent days

Of peace and self-command. Of rivers, fields,

And groves, I speak to thee, my friend – to thee

Who, yet a liveried schoolboy in the depths

Of the huge city, on the leaded roof

Of that wide edifice, thy home and school,

Wast used to lie and gaze upon the clouds

Moving in heaven, or haply, tired of this,

To shut thine eyes and by internal light

See trees, and meadows, and thy native stream

Far distant – thus beheld from year to year

Of thy long exile.