And thus
  Was founded a sure safeguard and defence
  Against the weight of meanness, selfish cares,
  Coarse manners, vulgar passions, that beat in 320
  On all sides from the ordinary world
  In which we traffic.  Starting from this point
  I had my face turned toward the truth, began
  With an advantage furnished by that kind
  Of prepossession, without which the soul 325
  Receives no knowledge that can bring forth good,
  No genuine insight ever comes to her. 
  From the restraint of over-watchful eyes
  Preserved, I moved about, year after year,
  Happy, [a] and now most thankful that my walk 330
  Was guarded from too early intercourse
  With the deformities of crowded life,
  And those ensuing laughters and contempts,
  Self-pleasing, which, if we would wish to think
  With a due reverence on earth’s rightful lord, 335
  Here placed to be the inheritor of heaven,
  Will not permit us; but pursue the mind,
  That to devotion willingly would rise,
  Into the temple and the temple’s heart.

    Yet deem not, Friend! that human kind with me 340
  Thus early took a place pre-eminent;
  Nature herself was, at this unripe time,
  But secondary to my own pursuits
  And animal activities, and all
  Their trivial pleasures; [b] and when these had drooped 345
  And gradually expired, and Nature, prized
  For her own sake, became my joy, even then—­[b]
  And upwards through late youth, until not less
  Than two-and-twenty summers had been told—­[c]
  Was Man in my affections and regards 350
  Subordinate to her, her visible forms
  And viewless agencies:  a passion, she,
  A rapture often, and immediate love
  Ever at hand; he, only a delight
  Occasional, an accidental grace, 355
  His hour being not yet come.  Far less had then
  The inferior creatures, beast or bird, attuned
  My spirit to that gentleness of love
  (Though they had long been carefully observed),
  Won from me those minute obeisances 360
  Of tenderness, [d] which I may number now
  With my first blessings.  Nevertheless, on these
  The light of beauty did not fall in vain,
  Or grandeur circumfuse them to no end.

    But when that first poetic faculty 365
  Of plain Imagination and severe,
  No longer a mute influence of the soul,
  Ventured, at some rash Muse’s earnest call,
  To try her strength among harmonious words; [e]
  And to book-notions and the rules of art 370
  Did knowingly conform itself; there came
  Among the simple shapes of human life
  A wilfulness of fancy and conceit; [e]