e hare that raced about with joy;
I heard the woods and distant waters roar;
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy:
The pleasant season did my heart employ:
My old remembrances went from me wholly; 20
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.

IV But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might
Of joy in minds that can no further go,
As high as we have mounted in delight
In our dejection do we sink as low; 25
To me that morning did it happen so;
And fears and fancies thick upon me came;
Dim sadness--and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could name.

V I heard the sky-lark warbling [2] in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare: 30
Even such a happy Child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful [3] creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care;
But there may come another day to me--
Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty. 35

VI My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life's business were a summer mood;
As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good; [4]
But how can He expect that others should 40
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all? [A]

VII I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride; [5]
Of Him who walked in glory and in joy 45
Following his plough, along the mountain-side: [6]
By our own spirits are we deified:
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come [7] in the end despondency and madness.

VIII Now, whether it were [8] by peculiar grace, 50
A leading from above, a something given,
Yet it befel, that, in this [9] lonely place,
When I with these untoward thoughts had striven,
Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven [10]
I saw [11] a Man before me unawares: 55
The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.
[12]

IX