O Soul of Nature! excellent and fair! That didst rejoice with me, with whom I, too, Rejoiced through early youth, before the winds 95 And roaring waters, and in lights and shades That marched and countermarched about the hills In glorious apparition, Powers on whom I daily waited, now all eye and now All ear; but never long without the heart 100 Employed, and man's unfolding intellect: O Soul of Nature! that, by laws divine Sustained and governed, still dost overflow With an impassioned life, what feeble ones Walk on this earth! how feeble have I been 105 When thou wert in thy strength! Nor this through stroke Of human suffering, such as justifies Remissness and inaptitude of mind, But through presumption; even in pleasure pleased Unworthily, disliking here, and there 110 Liking; by rules of mimic art transferred To things above all art; but more,--for this, Although a strong infection of the age, Was never much my habit--giving way To a comparison of scene with scene, 115 Bent overmuch on superficial things, Pampering myself with meagre novelties Of colour and proportion; to the moods Of time and season, to the moral power, The affections and the spirit of the place, 120 Insensible. Nor only did the love Of sitting thus in judgment interrupt My deeper feelings, but another cause, More subtle and less easily explained, That almost seems inherent in the creature, 125 A twofold frame of body and of mind. I speak in recollection of a time When the bodily eye, in every stage of life The most despotic of our senses, gained Such strength in _me_ as often held my mind 130 In absolute dominion. Gladly here, Entering upon abstruser argument, Could I endeavour to unfold the means Which Nature studiously employs to thwart This tyranny, summons all the senses each 135 To counteract the other, and themselves, And makes them all, and the objects with which all Are conversant, subservient in their turn To the great ends of Liberty and Power. But leave we this: enough that my delights 140 (Such as they were) were sought insatiably. Vivid the transport, vivid though not profound; I roamed from hill to hill, from rock to rock, Still craving combinations of new forms, New pleasure, wider empire for the sight, 145 Proud of her own endowments, and rejoiced To lay the inner faculties asleep. Amid the turns and counterturns, the strife And various trials of our complex being, As we grow up, such thraldom of that sense 150 Seems hard to shun. And yet I knew a maid, [B] A young enthusiast, who escaped these bonds; Her eye was not the mistress of her heart;