Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/42

20 Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me

The passions that build up our human soul;

Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,

But with high objects, with enduring things—

With life and nature, purifying thus

The elements of feeling and of thought,

And sanctifying, by such discipline,

Both pain and fear, until we recognise

A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me

With stinted kindness. In November days,

When vapours rolling down the valley made

A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods,

At noon and 'mid the calm of summer nights,

When, by the margin of the trembling lake,

Beneath the gloomy hills homeward I went

In solitude, such intercourse was mine;

Mine was it in the fields both day and night,

And by the waters, all the summer long.

And in the frosty season, when the sun

Was set, and visible for many a mile

The cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom,

I heeded not their summons: happy time

It was indeed for all of us—for me