Drifted about along the streets and walks,
  Read lazily in trivial books, went forth
  To gallop through the country in blind zeal 255
  Of senseless horsemanship, or on the breast
  Of Cam sailed boisterously, and let the stars
  Come forth, perhaps without one quiet thought.

    Such was the tenor of the second act
  In this new life.  Imagination slept, 260
  And yet not utterly.  I could not print
  Ground where the grass had yielded to the steps
  Of generations of illustrious men,
  Unmoved.  I could not always lightly pass
  Through the same gateways, sleep where they had slept, 265
  Wake where they waked, range that inclosure old,
  That garden of great intellects, undisturbed. 
  Place also by the side of this dark sense
  Of noble feeling, that those spiritual men,
  Even the great Newton’s own ethereal self, 270
  Seemed humbled in these precincts thence to be
  The more endeared.  Their several memories here
  (Even like their persons in their portraits clothed
  With the accustomed garb of daily life)
  Put on a lowly and a touching grace 275
  Of more distinct humanity, that left
  All genuine admiration unimpaired.

    Beside the pleasant Mill of Trompington [D]
  I laughed with Chaucer in the hawthorn shade;
  Heard him, while birds were warbling, tell his tales 280
  Of amorous passion.  And that gentle Bard,
  Chosen by the Muses for their Page of State—­
  Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven
  With the moon’s beauty and the moon’s soft pace,
  I called him Brother, Englishman, and Friend! 285
  Yea, our blind Poet, who, in his later day,
  Stood almost single; uttering odious truth—­
  Darkness before, and danger’s voice behind,
  Soul awful—­if the earth has ever lodged
  An awful soul—­I seemed to see him here 290
  Familiarly, and in his scholar’s dress
  Bounding before me, yet a stripling youth—­
  A boy, no better, with his rosy cheeks
  Angelical, keen eye, courageous look,
  And conscious step of purity and pride. 295
  Among the band of my compeers was one
  Whom chance had stationed in the very room
  Honoured by Milton’s name.  O temperate Bard! 
  Be it confest that, for the first time, seated
  Within thy innocent lodge and oratory, 300
  One of a festive circle, I poured out
  Libations, to thy memory drank, till pride
  And gratitude grew dizzy in a brain
  Never excited by the fumes of wine
  Before that hour, or since.  Then, forth I ran 305
  From the assembly; through a length of streets,
  Ran, ostrich-like, to reach our chapel