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 |  |
The surfaces of artificial life
And manners finely spun, the delicate race
Of colours, lurking, gleaming up and down
Through that state arras woven with silk and gold;
This wily interchange of snaky hues,
Willingly and unwillingly reveal'd
I had not learn'd to watch, and at this time
Perhaps, had such been in my daily sight
I might have been indifferent thereto
As Hermits are to tales of distant things.
Hence for those rarities elaborate
Having no relish yet, I was content
With the more homely produce, rudely pil'd
In this our coarser warehouse. At this day
I smile in many a mountain solitude
At passages and fragments that remain
Of that inferior exhibition, play'd
By wooden images, a theatre
For Wake or Fair. And oftentimes do flit
Remembrances before me of old Men,
Old Humourists who have been long in their graves,
And having almost in my mind put off
Their human names, have into Phantoms pass'd
Of texture midway betwixt life and books.
And manners finely spun, the delicate race
Of colours, lurking, gleaming up and down
Through that state arras woven with silk and gold;
This wily interchange of snaky hues,
Willingly and unwillingly reveal'd
I had not learn'd to watch, and at this time
Perhaps, had such been in my daily sight
I might have been indifferent thereto
As Hermits are to tales of distant things.
Hence for those rarities elaborate
Having no relish yet, I was content
With the more homely produce, rudely pil'd
In this our coarser warehouse. At this day
I smile in many a mountain solitude
At passages and fragments that remain
Of that inferior exhibition, play'd
By wooden images, a theatre
For Wake or Fair. And oftentimes do flit
Remembrances before me of old Men,
Old Humourists who have been long in their graves,
102
Their human names, have into Phantoms pass'd
Of texture midway betwixt life and books.
| The Prelude | |