Like living men, moved slowly through the mind By day, and were a trouble to my dreams. 400 Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought, That givest to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion, not in vain By day or star-light thus from my first dawn 405 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 410 The elements of feeling and of thought, And sanctifying, by such discipline, Both pain and fear, until we recognise A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me 415 With stinted kindness. In November days, When vapours rolling down the valley 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, 420 Beneath the gloomy hills homeward I went In solitude, such intercourse was mine; Mine was it in the fields both day and night, And by the waters, all the summer long. And in the frosty season, when the sun 425 Was set, and visible for many a mile The cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom, I heeded not their summons: happy time It was indeed for all of us--for me It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud 430 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 435 And woodland pleasures,--the resounding horn, The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare. So through the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle; with the din Smitten, the precipices rang aloud; 440 The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron; [g] while far distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west 445 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 450 That fled, and, 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 455 The rapid line of motion, then at once Have I, reclining back upon my heels, Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs