“There have I lov’d to skim the tender age, The golden precepts of the classic page; To lead the mind to those Elysian plains Where, thron’d in gold, immortal Science reigns; Fair to the view is sacred Truth display’d, In all the majesty of light arrayed, To teach, on rapid wings, the curious soul, To roam from earth to heaven, from pole to pole; From thence to search the mystic cause of things, And follow Nature to her secret springs; Nor less to guide the fluctuating youth, Firm in the sacred paths of moral truth. To regulate the mind’s disordered frame, And quench the passions kindling into flame; The glimmering fires of virtue to enlarge, And purge from vice’s dross my tender charge. Oft have I said, the paths of fame pursue, And all that virtue dictates, dare to do. Go to the world--peruse the book of man, And learn from thence thy own defects to scan; Severely honest, break no plighted trust-- But coldly rest not here--be more than just! Join to the rigour of the sires of Rome The gentler manners of the private dome; When virtue weeps in agony of woe, Teach from the heart the tender tears to flow; If Pleasure’s soothing song thy soul entice, Or all the gaudy pomp of splendid vice, Arise superior to the syren’s power, The wretch, the chort-liv’d vision of an hour. Soon fades her cheek, her blushing beauties fly, As fades the chequer’d bow that paints the sky.” Now, it must be acknowledged, that this writing, imitative as it is, is very remarkable as the production of a boy of fourteen; and that it displays an uncommon degree of artistic skill in its construction, with much command of language, and a moral culture one does not often meet with in boys. This, however, was not Wordsworth’s first attempt at composition. “It may be, perhaps, as well to mention,” says the poet, in his brief autobiographical notes, appended to the Memoir, “that the first verses I wrote, were a task imposed by my master; the subject ‘The Summer Vacation;’ and of _my own accord_ I added others upon ‘Return to School.’ These exercises, however,” he continues, “put it into my head to compose verses from the impulse of my own mind; and I wrote, while yet a schoolboy, a long poem running upon my own adventures, and the scenery of the country in which I was brought up. The only part of that poem which has been preserved is the conclusion of it, which stands at the beginning of my collected poems. It commences ‘Dear native regions.’” This poem was the archetype of the “Prelude,” and was a good preparatory discipline to the structure of that nobly musical poem.