Humility and modest awe themselves
  Betray me, serving often for a cloak
  To a more subtle selfishness; that now 245
  Locks every function up in blank reserve,
  Now dupes me, trusting to an anxious eye
  That with intrusive restlessness beats off
  Simplicity and self-presented truth. 
  Ah! better far than this, to stray about 250
  Voluptuously through fields and rural walks,
  And ask no record of the hours, resigned
  To vacant musing, unreproved neglect
  Of all things, and deliberate holiday. 
  Far better never to have heard the name 255
  Of zeal and just ambition, than to live
  Baffled and plagued by a mind that every hour
  Turns recreant to her task; takes heart again,
  Then feels immediately some hollow thought
  Hang like an interdict upon her hopes. 260
  This is my lot; for either still I find
  Some imperfection in the chosen theme,
  Or see of absolute accomplishment
  Much wanting, so much wanting, in myself,
  That I recoil and droop, and seek repose 265
  In listlessness from vain perplexity,
  Unprofitably travelling toward the grave,
  Like a false steward who hath much received
  And renders nothing back. 
                             Was it for this
  That one, the fairest of all rivers, [V] loved 270
  To blend his murmurs with my nurse’s song,
  And, from his alder shades and rocky falls,
  And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
  That flowed along my dreams?  For this, didst thou,
  O Derwent! winding among grassy holms 275
  Where I was looking on, a babe in arms,
  Make ceaseless music that composed my thoughts
  To more than infant softness, giving me
  Amid the fretful dwellings of mankind
  A foretaste, a dim earnest, of the calm 280
  That Nature breathes among the hills and groves? 
  When he had left the mountains and received
  On his smooth breast the shadow of those towers [W]
  That yet survive, a shattered monument
  Of feudal sway, the bright blue river passed 285
  Along the margin of our terrace walk; [X]
  A tempting playmate whom we dearly loved. 
  Oh, many a time have I, a five years’ child,
  In a small mill-race severed from his stream,
  Made one long bathing of a summer’s day; 290
  Basked in the sun, and plunged and basked again
  Alternate, all a summer’s day, or scoured
  The sandy fields, leaping through flowery groves
  Of yellow ragwort; or when rock and hill,
  The woods, and distant Skiddaw’s lofty height, 295
  Were bronzed with deepest radiance, stood alone
  Beneath the sky, as if I had been born
  On Indian plains, and from my mother’s hut
  Had run abroad in wantonness, to sport
  A naked savage, in the thunder shower. 300