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In Calling
Forth and Strengthening the Imagination
in Boyhood
and Early Youth
Wisdom and Spirit of the
Universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of
thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or
star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood
didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build
up our human soul,
Not with the mean and vulgar works
of man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature; purifying thus
The elements of
feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such
discipline
Both pain and fear, -until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
Nor was this
fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In
November days,
When vapours rolling down the valleys
made
A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods
At
noon; and mid the calm of summer nights,
When, by the
margin of the trembling Lake,
Beneath the gloomy
hills, I homeward went
In solitude, such intercourse
was mine:
'Twas mine among the fields both day and
night,
And by the waters, all the summer long.
And
in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and,
visible for many a mile,
The cottage windows through
the twilight blazed,
I heeded not the summons: -happy
time
It was indeed for all of us; for me
It was a
time of rapture! -Clear and loud
The village clock
tolled six -I wheeled about,
Proud and exulting like
an untired horse
That cares not for his home. -All
shod with steel
We hissed along the polished ice, in
games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And
woodland pleasures, -the resounding horn,
The pack
loud-bellowing, and the hunted hare.
So through the
darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was
idle: with the din
Meanwhile the precipices rang
aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills
Into the
tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy, not
unnoticed, while the stars,
Eastward, were sparkling
clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died
away.
Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, -or sportively
Glanced sideway,
leaving the tumultuous throng,
To cut across the
reflex of a Star;
Image that, flying still before me,
gleamed
Upon the glassy plain: and oftentimes,
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the
shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through
the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of
motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my
heels,
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me -even as if the earth had rolled
With
visible motion her diurnal round!
Behind me did they
stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I
stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a summer
sea.
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