Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/161

BOOK VI.] Of magic fiction, verse of mine perchance

May never tread; but scarcely Spenser's self

Could have more tranquil visions in his youth,

Or could more bright appearances create

Of human forms with superhuman powers,

Than I beheld loitering on calm clear nights

Alone, beneath this fairy work of earth.

On the vague reading of a truant youth

'Twere idle to descant. My inner judgment

Not seldom differed from my taste in books,

As if it appertained to another mind,

And yet the books which then I valued most

Are dearest to me now; for, having scanned,

Not heedlessly, the laws, and watched the forms

Of Nature, in that knowledge I possessed

A standard, often usefully applied,

Even when unconsciously, to things removed

From a familiar sympathy.—In fine,

I was a better judge of thoughts than words,

Misled in estimating words, not only

By common inexperience of youth,

But by the trade in classic niceties,

The dangerous craft of culling term and phrase

From languages that want the living voice