Ye Presences of Nature in the sky
  And on the earth!  Ye Visions of the hills! 465
  And Souls of lonely places! can I think
  A vulgar hope was yours when ye employed
  Such ministry, when ye through many a year
  Haunting me thus among my boyish sports,
  On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills, 470
  Impressed upon all forms the characters
  Of danger or desire; and thus did make
  The surface of the universal earth
  With triumph and delight, with hope and fear,
  Work like a sea? 
    Not uselessly employed, 475
  Might I pursue this theme through every change
  Of exercise and play, to which the year
  Did summon us in his delightful round.

    We were a noisy crew; the sun in heaven
  Beheld not vales more beautiful than ours; 480
  Nor saw a band in happiness and joy
  Richer, or worthier of the ground they trod. 
  I could record with no reluctant voice
  The woods of autumn, and their hazel bowers
  With milk-white clusters hung; the rod and line, 485
  True symbol of hope’s foolishness, whose strong
  And unreproved enchantment led us on
  By rocks and pools shut out from every star,
  All the green summer, to forlorn cascades
  Among the windings hid of mountain brooks. [i] 490
  —­Unfading recollections! at this hour
  The heart is almost mine with which I felt,
  From some hill-top on sunny afternoons, [j]
  The paper kite high among fleecy clouds
  Pull at her rein like an impetuous courser; 495
  Or, from the meadows sent on gusty days,
  Beheld her breast the wind, then suddenly
  Dashed headlong, and rejected by the storm.

    Ye lowly cottages wherein we dwelt,
  A ministration of your own was yours; 500
  Can I forget you, being as you were
  So beautiful among the pleasant fields
  In which ye stood? or can I here forget
  The plain and seemly countenance with which
  Ye dealt out your plain comforts?  Yet had ye 505
  Delights and exultations of your own. [k]
  Eager and never weary we pursued
  Our home-amusements by the warm peat-fire
  At evening, when with pencil, and smooth slate
  In square divisions parcelled out and all 510
  With crosses and with cyphers scribbled o’er,
  We schemed and puzzled, head opposed to head
  In strife too humble to be named in verse: 
  Or round the naked table, snow-white deal,
  Cherry or maple, sate in close array, 515
  And to the combat, Loo or Whist, led on
  A thick-ribbed army; not, as in the world,
  Neglected and ungratefully thrown by
  Even for the very service they had wrought,