the woods, [7]
  How often has my spirit turned to thee! 
      And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, 60
  With many recognitions dim and faint,
  And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
  The picture of the mind revives again: 
  While here I stand, not only with the sense
  Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts 65
  That in this moment there is life and food
  For future years.  And so I dare to hope,
  Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
  I came among these hills; when like a roe
  I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides 70
  Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
  Wherever nature led:  more like a man
  Flying from something that he dreads, than one
  Who sought the thing he loved.  For nature then
  (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, 75
  And their glad animal movements all gone by)
  To me was all in all.—­I cannot paint
  What then I was.  The sounding cataract
  Haunted me like a passion:  the tall rock,
  The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 80
  Their colours and their forms, were then to me
  An appetite; a feeling and a love,
  That had no need of a remoter charm,
  By thought supplied, nor [8] any interest
  Unborrowed from the eye.—­That time is past, 85
  And all its aching joys are now no more,
  And all its dizzy raptures. [F] Not for this
  Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
  Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
  Abundant recompence.  For I have learned 90
  To look on nature, not as in the hour
  Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
  The still, sad music of humanity,
  Nor [9] harsh nor grating, though of ample power
  To chasten and subdue.  And I have felt 95
  A presence that disturbs me with the joy
  Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
  Of something far more deeply interfused,
  Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
  And the round ocean and the living air, 100
  And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 
  A motion and a spirit, that impels
  All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
  And rolls through all things.  Therefore am I still
  A lover of the meadows and the woods, 105
  And mountains; and of all that we behold
  From this green earth; of all the mighty world
  Of eye, and ear,—­both what they half create, [G]
  And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
  In nature and the language of the sense, 110
  The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
  The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
  Of all my moral being. 
      Nor perchance,
  If I were not thus taught, should I the more 115