Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 2.djvu/37

29 My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,

As if life's business were a summer mood;

As if all needful things would come unsought

To genial faith, still rich in genial good;

But how can He expect that others should

Build for him, sow for him, and at his call

Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,

The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;

Of Him who walked in glory and in joy

Behind his plough, upon the mountain-side:

By our own spirits are we deified;

We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;

But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.

Now whether it were by peculiar grace,

A leading from above, a something given,

Yet it befel, that, in this lonely place,

When up and down my fancy thus was driven,

And I with these untoward thoughts had striven,

I saw a Man before me unawares:

The oldest Man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.