Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/151

BOOK V.] And seasons serve; all Faculties to whom

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

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

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

At thought of raptures now for ever flown;

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

Dead in my eyes, dead as a theatre

Fresh emptied of spectators. Twice five years