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 |  |
Such was the tenor of the opening act
In this new life. Imagination slept,
And yet not utterly. I could not print
Ground where the grass had yielded to the steps
Of generations of illustrious Men,
Unmov'd; I could not always lightly pass
Through the same Gateways; sleep where they had slept,
Wake where they wak'd, range that enclosure old
That garden of great intellects undisturb'd.
Place also by the side of this dark sense
Of nobler feeling, that those spiritual Men,
Even the great Newton's own etherial Self,
Seem'd humbled in these precincts; thence to be
The more belov'd; invested here with tasks
Of life's plain business, as a daily garb;
Dictators at the plough, a change that left
All genuine admiration unimpair'd.
In this new life. Imagination slept,
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Ground where the grass had yielded to the steps
Of generations of illustrious Men,
Unmov'd; I could not always lightly pass
Through the same Gateways; sleep where they had slept,
Wake where they wak'd, range that enclosure old
That garden of great intellects undisturb'd.
Place also by the side of this dark sense
Of nobler feeling, that those spiritual Men,
Even the great Newton's own etherial Self,
Seem'd humbled in these precincts; thence to be
The more belov'd; invested here with tasks
Of life's plain business, as a daily garb;
Dictators at the plough, a change that left
All genuine admiration unimpair'd.
| The Prelude | |