Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/96

74 Those venerable Doctors saw of old,

When all who dwelt within these famous walls

Led in abstemiousness a studious life;

When, in forlorn and naked chambers cooped

And crowded, o'er the ponderous books they hung

Like caterpillars eating out their way

In silence, or with keen devouring noise

Not to be tracked or fathered. Princes then

At matins froze, and couched at curfew-time,

Trained up through piety and zeal to prize

Spare diet, patient labour, and plain weeds.

O seat of Arts! renowned throughout the world!

Far different service in those homely days

The Muses' modest nurslings underwent

From their first childhood: in that glorious time

When Learning, like a stranger come from far,

Sounding through Christian lands her trumpet, roused

Peasant and king; when boys and youths, the growth

Of ragged villages and crazy huts,

Forsook their homes, and, errant in the quest

Of Patron, famous school or friendly nook,

Where, pensioned, they in shelter might sit down,

From town to town and through wide scattered realms

Journeyed with ponderous folios in their hands;

And often, starting from some covert place,