V I heard the sky-lark warbling [2] in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare:  30
Even such a happy Child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful [3] creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care;
But there may come another day to me—­
Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty. 35

VI My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life’s business were a summer mood;
As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good; [4]
But how can He expect that others should 40
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all? [A]

VII I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride; [5]
Of Him who walked in glory and in joy 45
Following his plough, along the mountain-side:  [6]
By our own spirits are we deified: 
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come [7] in the end despondency and madness.

VIII Now, whether it were [8] by peculiar grace, 50
A leading from above, a something given,
Yet it befel, that, in this [9] lonely place,
When I with these untoward thoughts had striven,
Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven [10]
I saw [11] a Man before me unawares:  55
The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.
[12]

IX As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence;
Wonder to all who [13] do the same espy,
By what means it could thither come, and whence; 60
So that it seems a thing endued with sense: 
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that [14] on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself;

X Such seemed this Man, not all alive nor dead,
Nor all asleep—­in his extreme old age:  65
His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming together in life’s pilgrimage; [15]
As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,
A more than human weight upon his frame [16] had cast. 70

XI Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale face, [17]
Upon a long grey staff of shaven wood: 
And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,
Upon the margin of that moorish flood [18]
Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood, 75
That heareth not the loud winds when they call;
And moveth all together, if it move [19] at all.
[20]

XII At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
Upon the muddy water, which he conned, 80
As if he had been reading in a book: 
And now a stranger’s privilege I took; [21]
And, drawing to his side, to him did say,
“This morning gives us promise of a glorious day.”