mind
  Turned this way—­that way! sportive and alert
  And watchful, as a kitten when at play,
  While winds are eddying round her, among straws 440
  And rustling leaves.  Enchanting age and sweet! 
  Romantic almost, looked at through a space,
  How small, of intervening years!  For then,
  Though surely no mean progress had been made
  In meditations holy and sublime, 445
  Yet something of a girlish child-like gloss
  Of novelty survived for scenes like these;
  Enjoyment haply handed down from times
  When at a country-playhouse, some rude barn
  Tricked out for that proud use, if I perchance 450
  Caught, on a summer evening through a chink
  In the old wall, an unexpected glimpse
  Of daylight, the bare thought of where I was
  Gladdened me more than if I had been led
  Into a dazzling cavern of romance, 455
  Crowded with Genii busy among works
  Not to be looked at by the common sun.

  The matter that detains us now may seem,
  To many, neither dignified enough
  Nor arduous, yet will not be scorned by them, 460
  Who, looking inward, have observed the ties
  That bind the perishable hours of life
  Each to the other, and the curious props
  By which the world of memory and thought
  Exists and is sustained.  More lofty themes, 465
  Such as at least do wear a prouder face,
  Solicit our regard; but when I think
  Of these, I feel the imaginative power
  Languish within me; even then it slept,
  When, pressed by tragic sufferings, the heart 470
  Was more than full; amid my sobs and tears
  It slept, even in the pregnant season of youth. 
  For though I was most passionately moved
  And yielded to all changes of the scene
  With an obsequious promptness, yet the storm 475
  Passed not beyond the suburbs of the mind;
  Save when realities of act and mien,
  The incarnation of the spirits that move
  In harmony amid the Poet’s world,
  Rose to ideal grandeur, or, called forth 480
  By power of contrast, made me recognise,
  As at a glance, the things which I had shaped,
  And yet not shaped, had seen and scarcely seen,
  When, having closed the mighty Shakespeare’s page,
  I mused, and thought, and felt, in solitude. 485

  Pass we from entertainments, that are such
  Professedly, to others titled higher,
  Yet, in the estimate of youth at least,
  More near akin to those than names imply,—­
  I mean the brawls of lawyers in their courts 490
  Before the ermined judge, or that great stage [X]
  Where senators, tongue-favoured men, perform,
  Admired and envied.  Oh! the beating