The Prelude or Growth of a Poet's Mind: By William Wordsworth: Edited from the manuscripts with introduction, textual and critical notes by Ernest de Selincourt |
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 | The Prelude |  |
A freshness also found I at this time
In human Life, the life I mean of those
Whose occupations really I lov'd.
The prospect often touch'd me with surprize,
Crowded and full, and chang'd, as seem'd to me,
Even as a garden in the heat of Spring,
After an eight-days' absence. For (to omit
The things which were the same and yet appear'd
So different) amid this solitude,
The little Vale where was my chief abode,
'Twas not indifferent to a youthful mind
To note, perhaps, some shelter'd Seat in which
An old Man had been used to sun himself,
Now empty; pale-fac'd Babes whom I had left
In arms, known children of the neighbourhood,
Now rosy prattlers, tottering up and down;
And growing Girls whose beauty, filch'd away
With all its pleasant promises, was gone
To deck some slighted Playmate's homely cheek.
In human Life, the life I mean of those
Whose occupations really I lov'd.
The prospect often touch'd me with surprize,
Crowded and full, and chang'd, as seem'd to me,
Even as a garden in the heat of Spring,
After an eight-days' absence. For (to omit
The things which were the same and yet appear'd
So different) amid this solitude,
The little Vale where was my chief abode,
'Twas not indifferent to a youthful mind
To note, perhaps, some shelter'd Seat in which
An old Man had been used to sun himself,
Now empty; pale-fac'd Babes whom I had left
In arms, known children of the neighbourhood,
Now rosy prattlers, tottering up and down;
And growing Girls whose beauty, filch'd away
With all its pleasant promises, was gone
To deck some slighted Playmate's homely cheek.
| The Prelude | |