’Twas I to these the magick gave,
That made thy heart, a willing slave,
  To gentle Nature bend;
And taught thee how with tree and flower,
And whispering gale, and dropping shower,
In converse sweet to pass the hour,
  As with an early friend: 

That mid the noontide sunny haze
Did in thy languid bosom raise
  The raptures of the boy;
When, wak’d as if to second birth,
Thy soul through every pore look’d forth,
And gaz’d upon the beauteous Earth
  With myriad eyes of joy: 

That made thy heart, like his above,
To flow with universal love
  For every living thing. 
And, oh! if I, with ray divine,
Thus tempering, did thy soul refine,
Then let thy gentle heart be mine,
  And bless the Sylph of Spring.

And next the Sylph of Summer fair;
The while her crisped, golden hair
  Half veil’d her sunny eyes: 
Nor less may I thy homage claim,
At touch of whose exhaling flame
The fog of Spring that chill’d thy frame
  In genial vapour flies.

Oft by the heat of noon opprest,
With flowing hair and open vest,
  Thy footsteps have I won
To mossy couch of welling grot,
Where thou hast bless’d thy happy lot. 
That thou in that delicious spot
  May’st see, not feel, the sun: 

Thence tracing from the body’s change,
In curious philosophic range,
  The motion of the mind;
And how from thought to thought it flew,
Still hoping in each vision new
The faery land of bliss to view,
  But ne’er that land to find.

And then, as grew thy languid mood,
To some embow’ring silent wood
  I led thy careless way;
Where high from tree to tree in air
Thou saw’st the spider swing her snare. 
So bright!—­as if, entangled there,
  The sun had left a ray: 

Or lur’d thee to some beetling steep
To mark the deep and quiet sleep
  That wrapt the tarn below;
And mountain blue and forest green
Inverted on its plane serene,
Dim gleaming through the filmy sheen
  That glaz’d the painted show;

Perchance, to mark the fisher’s skiff
Swift from beneath some shadowy cliff
  Dart, like a gust of wind;
And, as she skimm’d the sunny lake,
In many a playful wreath her wake
Far-trailing, like a silvery snake,
  With sinuous length behind.

Nor less when hill and dale and heath
Still Evening wrapt in mimic death. 
  Thy spirit true I prov’d: 
Around thee, as the darkness stole,
Before thy wild, creative soul
I bade each faery vision roll,
  Thine infancy had lov’d.

Then o’er the silent sleeping land,
Thy fancy, like a magick wand,
  Forth caird the Elfin race: 
And now around the fountain’s brim
In circling dance they gaily skim;
And now upon its surface swim,
  And water-spiders chase;

Each circumstance of sight or sound
Peopling the vacant air around
  With visionary life: 
For if amid a thicket stirr’d,
Or flitting bat, or wakeful bird,
Then straight thy eager fancy heard
  The din of Faery strife;