The Prelude. William Wordsworth

​Did summon us in his delightful round.

      We were a noisy crew; the sun in heaven

       Beheld not vales more beautiful than ours;

       Nor saw a band in happiness and joy

       Richer, or worthier of the ground they trod.

       I could record with no reluctant voice

       The woods of autumn, and their hazel bowers

       With milk-white clusters hung; the rod and line,

       True symbol of hope's foolishness, whose strong

       And unreproved enchantment led us on

       By rocks and pools shut out from every star,

       All the green summer, to forlorn cascades

       Among the windings hid of mountain brooks.

      —Unfading recollections! at this hour

       The heart is almost mine with which I felt,

       From some hill-top on sunny afternoons,

       The paper kite high among fleecy clouds

       Pull at her rein like an impetuous courser;

       Or, from the meadows sent on gusty days,

       Beheld her breast the wind, then suddenly

       Dashed headlong, and rejected by the storm.

      Ye lowly cottages wherein we dwelt,

       A ministration of your own was yours;

       ​Can I forget you, being as you were

       So beautiful among the pleasant fields

       In which ye stood? or can I here forget

       The plain and seemly countenance with which

       Ye dealt out your plain comforts? Yet had ye

       Delights and exultations of your own.

       Eager and never weary we pursued

       Our home-amusements by the warm peat-fire

       At evening, when with pencil, and smooth slate

       In square divisions parcelled out and all

       With crosses and with cyphers scribbled o'er,

       We schemed and puzzled, head opposed to head

       In strife too humble to be named in verse:

       Or round the naked table, snow-white deal,

       Cherry or maple, sate in close array,

       And to the combat, Loo or Whist, led on

       A thick-ribbed army; not, as in the world,

       Neglected and ungratefully thrown by

       Even for the very service they had wrought,

       But husbanded through many a long campaign.

       Uncouth assemblage was it, where no few

       Had changed their functions; some, plebeian cards

       Which Fate, beyond the promise of their birth,

       Had dignified, and called to represent

       The persons of departed potentates.

       ​Oh, with what echoes on the board they fell!

       Ironic diamonds—clubs, hearts, diamonds, spades,

       A congregation piteously akin!

       Cheap matter offered they to boyish wit,

       Those sooty knaves, precipitated down

       With scoffs and taunts, like Vulcan out of heaven:

       The paramount ace, a moon in her eclipse,

       Queens gleaming through their splendour's last decay,

       And monarchs surly at the wrongs sustained

       By royal visages. Meanwhile abroad

       Incessant rain was falling, or the frost

       Raged bitterly, with keen and silent tooth;

       And, interrupting oft that eager game,

       From under Esthwaite's splitting fields of ice

       The pent-up air, struggling to free itself,

       Gave out to meadow grounds and hills a loud

       Protracted yelling, like the noise of wolves

       Howling in troops along the Bothnic Main.

      Nor, sedulous as I have been to trace

       How Nature by extrinsic passion first

       Peopled the mind with forms sublime or fair,

       And made me love them, may I here omit

       How other pleasures have been mine, and joys

       Of subtler origin; how I have felt,

       ​Not seldom even in that tempestuous time,

       Those hallowed and pure motions of the sense

       Which seem, in their simplicity, to own

       An intellectual charm; that calm delight

       Which, if I err not, surely must belong

       To those first-born affinities that fit

       Our new existence to existing things,

       And, in our dawn of being, constitute

       The bond of union between life and joy.

      Yes, I remember when the changeful earth,

       And twice five summers on my mind had stamped

       The faces of the moving year, even then

       I held unconscious intercourse with beauty

       Old as creation, drinking in a pure

       Organic pleasure from the silver wreaths

       Of curling mist, or from the level plain

       Of waters coloured by impending clouds.

      The sands of Westmoreland, the creeks and bays

       Of Cumbria's rocky limits, they can tell

       How, when the Sea threw off his evening shade,

       And to the shepherd's hut on distant hills

       Sent welcome notice of the rising moon,

       How I have stood, to fancies such as these

       ​A stranger, linking with the spectacle

       No conscious memory of a kindred sight,

       And bringing with me no peculiar sense

       Of quietness or peace; yet have I stood,

       Even while mine eye hath moved o'er many a league

       Of shining water, gathering as it seemed

       Through every hair-breadth in that field of light

       New pleasure like a bee among the flowers.

      Thus oft amid those fits of vulgar joy

       Which, through all seasons, on a child's pursuits

       Are prompt attendants, 'mid that giddy bliss

       Which, like a tempest, works along the blood

       And is forgotten; even then I felt

       Gleams like the flashing of a shield;—the earth

       And common face of Nature spake to me

       Rememberable things; sometimes, 'tis true,

       By chance collisions and quaint accidents

       (Like those ill-sorted unions, work supposed

       Of evil-minded fairies), yet not vain

       Nor profitless, if haply they impressed

       Collateral objects and appearances,

       Albeit lifeless then, and doomed to sleep