Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/164

142 Of those abstractions to a mind beset

With images, and haunted by herself,

And specially delightful unto me

Was that clear synthesis built up aloft

So gracefully; even then when it appeared

Not more than a mere plaything, or a toy

To sense embodied: not the thing it is

In verity, an independent world,

Created out of pure intelligence.

Such dispositions then were mine unearned

By aught, I fear, of genuine desert—

Mine, through heaven's grace and inborn aptitudes.

And not to leave the story of that time

Imperfect, with these habits must be joined,

Moods melancholy, fits of spleen, 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.

—To time thus spent, add multitudes of hours

Pilfered away, by what the Bard who sang

Of the Enchanter Indolence hath called

"Good-natured lounging," and behold a map