Such pleasant office have we long pursued
  Incumbent o’er the surface of past time
  With like success, nor often have appeared
  Shapes fairer or less doubtfully discerned
  Than those to which the Tale, indulgent Friend! 
  Would now direct thy notice.  Yet in spite
  Of pleasure won, and knowledge not withheld,
  There was an inner falling off—­I loved,
  Loved deeply all that had been loved before
  More deeply even than ever:  but a swarm
  Of heady schemes jostling each other, gawds,
  And feast and dance, and public revelry,
  And sports and games (too grateful in themselves,
  Yet in themselves less grateful, I believe,
  Than as they were a badge glossy and fresh
  Of manliness and freedom) all conspired
  To lure my mind from firm habitual quest
  Of feeding pleasures, to depress the zeal
  And damp those yearnings which had once been mine—­
  A wild, unworldly-minded youth, given up
  To his own eager thoughts.  It would demand
  Some skill, and longer time than may be spared,
  To paint these vanities, and how they wrought
  In haunts where they, till now, had been unknown. 
  It seemed the very garments that they wore
  Preyed on my strength, and stopped the quiet stream
  Of self-forgetfulness. 
            Yes, that heartless chase
  Of trivial pleasures was a poor exchange
  For books and nature at that early age. 
  ’Tis true, some casual knowledge might be gained
  Of character or life; but at that time,
  Of manners put to school I took small note,
  And all my deeper passions lay elsewhere. 
  Far better had it been to exalt the mind
  By solitary study, to uphold
  Intense desire through meditative peace;
  And yet, for chastisement of these regrets,
  The memory of one particular hour
  Doth here rise up against me.  ’Mid a throng
  Of maids and youths, old men, and matrons staid,
  A medley of all tempers, I had passed
  The night in dancing, gayety, and mirth,
  With din of instruments and shuffling feet,
  And glancing forms, and tapers glittering,
  And unaimed prattle flying up and down;
  Spirits upon the stretch, and here and there
  Slight shocks of young love-liking interspersed,
  Whose transient pleasure mounted to the head,
  And tingled through the veins.  Ere we retired
  The cock had crowed, and now the eastern sky
  Was kindling, not unseen, from humble copse
  And open field, through which the pathway wound,
  And homeward led my steps.  Magnificent
  The morning rose, in memorable pomp,
  Glorious as e’er I had beheld—­in front,
  The sea lay laughing at a distance; near,
  The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds,
  Grain-tinctured, drenched in Empyrean light;
  And in the meadows and the lower grounds
  Was all the sweetness of a common dawn—­
  Dews, vapors, and the melody of birds,