And laborers going forth to till the fields. 
    Ah! need I say, dear Friend! that to the brim
  My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows
  Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
  Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
  A dedicated Spirit.  On I walked
  In thankful blessedness, which yet survives. 
    Strange rendezvous!  My mind was at that time
  A parti-colored show of grave and gay,
  Solid and light, short-sighted and profound;
  Of inconsiderate habits and sedate,
  Consorting in one mansion unreproved. 
  The worth I knew of powers that I possessed,
  Though slighted and too oft misused.  Besides,
  That summer, swarming as it did with thoughts
  Transient and idle, lacked not intervals
  When Folly from the frown of fleeting Time
  Shrunk, and the mind experienced in herself
  Conformity as just as that of old
  To the end and written spirit of God’s works,
  Whether held forth in Nature or in Man,
  Through pregnant vision, separate or conjoined. 
    When from our better selves we have too long
  Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
  Sick of its business, of its pleasure tired,
  How gracious, how benign, is Solitude;
  How potent a mere image of her sway;
  Most potent when impressed upon the mind
  With an appropriate human centre—­hermit,
  Deep in the bosom of the wilderness;
  Votary (in vast cathedral, where no foot
  Is treading, where no other face is seen)
  Kneeling at prayers; or watchman on the top
  Of lighthouse, beaten by Atlantic waves;
  Or as the soul of that great Power is met
  Sometimes embodied on a public road,
  When, for the night deserted, it assumes
  A character of quiet more profound
  Than pathless wastes. 
            Once, when those summer months,
  Where flown, and autumn brought its annual show
  Of oars with oars contending, sails with sails,
  Upon Windander’s spacious breast, it chanced
  That—­after I had left a flower-decked room
  (Whose in-door pastime, lighted up, survived
  To a late hour), and spirits overwrought
  Were making night do penance for a day
  Spent in a round of strenuous idleness—­
  My homeward course led up a long ascent,
  Where the road’s watery surface, to the top
  Of that sharp rising, glittered to the moon
  And bore the semblance of another stream
  Stealing with silent lapse to join the brook
  That murmured in the vale.  All else was still;
  No living thing appeared in earth or air,
  And, save the flowing water’s peaceful voice,
  Sound there was none—­but, lo! an uncouth shape,
  Shown by a sudden turning of the road,
  So near that, slipping back into the shade
  Of a thick hawthorn, I could mark him well,
  Myself unseen.  He was of stature tall,
  A span above man’s common measure, tall,