And Nature and her objects beautified
  These fictions, as in some sort, in their turn, 375
  They burnished her.  From touch of this new power
  Nothing was safe:  the elder-tree that grew
  Beside the well-known charnel-house had then
  A dismal look:  the yew-tree had its ghost,
  That took his station there for ornament:  380
  The dignities of plain occurrence then
  Were tasteless, and truth’s golden mean, a point
  Where no sufficient pleasure could be found. 
  Then, if a widow, staggering with the blow
  Of her distress, was known to have turned her steps 385
  To the cold grave in which her husband slept,
  One night, or haply more than one, through pain
  Or half-insensate impotence of mind,
  The fact was caught at greedily, and there
  She must be visitant the whole year through, 390
  Wetting the turf with never-ending tears.

    Through quaint obliquities I might pursue
  These cravings; when the fox-glove, one by one,
  Upwards through every stage of the tall stem,
  Had shed beside the public way its bells, 395
  And stood of all dismantled, save the last
  Left at the tapering ladder’s top, that seemed
  To bend as doth a slender blade of grass
  Tipped with a rain-drop, Fancy loved to seat,
  Beneath the plant despoiled, but crested still 400
  With this last relic, soon itself to fall,
  Some vagrant mother, whose arch little ones,
  All unconcerned by her dejected plight,
  Laughed as with rival eagerness their hands
  Gathered the purple cups that round them lay, 405
  Strewing the turf’s green slope. 
                                  A diamond light
  (Whene’er the summer sun, declining, smote
  A smooth rock wet with constant springs) was seen
  Sparkling from out a copse-clad bank that rose
  Fronting our cottage. [f] Oft beside the hearth 410
  Seated, with open door, often and long
  Upon this restless lustre have I gazed,
  That made my fancy restless as itself. 
  ’Twas now for me a burnished silver shield
  Suspended over a knight’s tomb, who lay 415
  Inglorious, buried in the dusky wood: 
  An entrance now into some magic cave
  Or palace built by fairies of the rock;
  Nor could I have been bribed to disenchant
  The spectacle, by visiting the spot. 420
  Thus wilful Fancy, in no hurtful mood,
  Engrafted far-fetched shapes on feelings bred
  By pure Imagination:  busy Power [g]
  She was, and with her ready pupil turned
  Instinctively to human passions, then 425
  Least understood.  Yet, ’mid the fervent swarm
  Of these vagaries, with an eye so rich