And those ensuing laughters and contempts, Self-pleasing, which, if we would wish to think With a due reverence on earth's rightful lord, 335 Here placed to be the inheritor of heaven, Will not permit us; but pursue the mind, That to devotion willingly would rise, Into the temple and the temple's heart. Yet deem not, Friend! that human kind with me 340 Thus early took a place pre-eminent; Nature herself was, at this unripe time, But secondary to my own pursuits And animal activities, and all Their trivial pleasures; [b] and when these had drooped 345 And gradually expired, and Nature, prized For her own sake, became my joy, even then--[b] And upwards through late youth, until not less Than two-and-twenty summers had been told--[c] Was Man in my affections and regards 350 Subordinate to her, her visible forms And viewless agencies: a passion, she, A rapture often, and immediate love Ever at hand; he, only a delight Occasional, an accidental grace, 355 His hour being not yet come. Far less had then The inferior creatures, beast or bird, attuned My spirit to that gentleness of love (Though they had long been carefully observed), Won from me those minute obeisances 360 Of tenderness, [d] which I may number now With my first blessings. Nevertheless, on these The light of beauty did not fall in vain, Or grandeur circumfuse them to no end. But when that first poetic faculty 365 Of plain Imagination and severe, No longer a mute influence of the soul, Ventured, at some rash Muse's earnest call, To try her strength among harmonious words; [e] And to book-notions and the rules of art 370 Did knowingly conform itself; there came Among the simple shapes of human life A wilfulness of fancy and conceit; [e] And Nature and her objects beautified These fictions, as in some sort, in their turn, 375 They burnished her. From touch of this new power Nothing was safe: the elder-tree that grew Beside the well-known charnel-house had then A dismal look: the yew-tree had its ghost, That took his station there for ornament: 380 The dignities of plain occurrence then Were tasteless, and truth's golden mean, a point Where no sufficient pleasure could be found. Then, if a widow, staggering with the blow Of her distress, was known to have turned her steps 385 To the cold grave in which her husband slept, One night, or haply more than one, through pain Or half-insensate impotence of mind, The fact was caught at greedily, and there She must be visitant the whole year through, 390 Wetting the turf with never-ending tears.