Too learned, or too good; [N] but wanton, fresh,
  And bandied up and down by love and hate;
  Not unresentful where self-justified;
  Fierce, moody, patient, venturous, modest, shy; 415
  Mad at their sports like withered leaves in winds;
  Though doing wrong and suffering, and full oft
  Bending beneath our life’s mysterious weight
  Of pain, and doubt, and fear, yet yielding not
  In happiness to the happiest upon earth. 420
  Simplicity in habit, truth in speech,
  Be these the daily strengtheners of their minds;
  May books and Nature be their early joy! 
  And knowledge, rightly honoured with that name—­
  Knowledge not purchased by the loss of power! 425

    Well do I call to mind the very week
  When I was first intrusted to the care
  Of that sweet Valley; when its paths, its shores,
  And brooks [O] were like a dream of novelty
  To my half-infant thoughts; that very week, 430
  While I was roving up and down alone,
  Seeking I knew not what, I chanced to cross
  One of those open fields, which, shaped like ears,
  Make green peninsulas on Esthwaite’s Lake: 
  Twilight was coming on, yet through the gloom 435
  Appeared distinctly on the opposite shore
  A heap of garments, as if left by one
  Who might have there been bathing.  Long I watched,
  But no one owned them; meanwhile the calm lake
  Grew dark with all the shadows on its breast, 440
  And, now and then, a fish up-leaping snapped
  The breathless stillness. [P] The succeeding day,
  Those unclaimed garments telling a plain tale
  Drew to the spot an anxious crowd; some looked
  In passive expectation from the shore, 445
  While from a boat others hung o’er the deep,
  Sounding with grappling irons and long poles. 
  At last, the dead man, ’mid that beauteous scene
  Of trees and hills and water, bolt upright
  Rose, with his ghastly face, a spectre shape 450
  Of terror; yet no soul-debasing fear,
  Young as I was, a child not nine years old,
  Possessed me, for my inner eye had seen
  Such sights before, among the shining streams
  Of faery land, the forest of romance. 455
  Their spirit hallowed the sad spectacle
  With decoration of ideal grace;
  A dignity, a smoothness, like the works
  Of Grecian art, and purest poesy.

    A precious treasure had I long possessed, 460
  A little yellow, canvas-covered book,
  A slender abstract of the Arabian tales;
  And, from companions in a new abode,
  When first I learnt, that this dear prize of mine
  Was but a block hewn from a mighty quarry—­465
  That there were four large volumes, laden