Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/37

BOOK I.] Of feudal sway, the bright blue river passed

Along the margin of our terrace walk;

A tempting playmate whom we dearly loved.

Oh, many a time have I, a five years' child,

In a small mill-race severed from his stream,

Made one long bathing of a summer's day;

Basked in the sun, and plunged and basked again

Alternate, all a summer's day, or scoured

The sandy fields, leaping through flowery groves

Of yellow ragwort; or when rock and hill,

The woods, and distant Skiddaw's lofty height,

Were bronzed with deepest radiance, stood alone

Beneath the sky, as if I had been born

On Indian plains, and from my mother's hut

Had run abroad in wantonness, to sport

A naked savage, in the thunder shower.

Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up

Fostered alike by beauty and by fear:

Much favoured in my birth-place, and no less

In that beloved Vale to which erelong

We were transplanted—there were we let loose

For sports of wider range. Ere I had told

Ten birth-days, when among the mountain slopes

Frost, and the breath of frosty wind, had snapped