And dead still water lay upon my mind Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky, Never before so beautiful, sank down Into my heart, and held me like a dream! Thus were my sympathies enlarged, and thus 175 Daily the common range of visible things Grew dear to me: already I began To love the sun; a boy I loved the sun, Not as I since have loved him, as a pledge And surety of our earthly life, a light 180 Which we behold and feel we are alive; [O] Nor for his bounty to so many worlds-- But for this cause, that I had seen him lay His beauty on the morning hills, had seen The western mountain [P] touch his setting orb, 185 In many a thoughtless hour, when, from excess Of happiness, my blood appeared to flow For its own pleasure, and I breathed with joy. And, from like feelings, humble though intense, To patriotic and domestic love 190 Analogous, the moon to me was dear; For I could dream away my purposes, Standing to gaze upon her while she hung Midway between the hills, as if she knew No other region, but belonged to thee, [Q] 195 Yea, appertained by a peculiar right To thee and thy grey huts, thou one dear Vale! [R] Those incidental charms which first attached My heart to rural objects, day by day Grew weaker, and I hasten on to tell 200 How Nature, intervenient till this time And secondary, now at length was sought For her own sake. But who shall parcel out His intellect by geometric rules, Split like a province into round and square? 205 Who knows the individual hour in which His habits were first sown, even as a seed? Who that shall point as with a wand and say "This portion of the river of my mind Came from yon fountain?" [S] Thou, my Friend! art one 210 More deeply read in thy own thoughts; to thee Science appears but what in truth she is, Not as our glory and our absolute boast, But as a succedaneum, and a prop To our infirmity. No officious slave 215 Art thou of that false secondary power By which we multiply distinctions; then, Deem that our puny boundaries are things That we perceive, and not that we have made. To thee, unblinded by these formal arts, 220 The unity of all hath been revealed, And thou wilt doubt, with me less aptly skilled Than many are to range the faculties In scale and order, class the cabinet Of their sensations, and in voluble phrase 225 Run through the history and birth of each As of a single independent thing. Hard task, vain hope, to analyse the mind, If each most obvious and particular thought, Not in a mystical and idle sense, 230 But in the words of Reason deeply weighed,