495 The tales that charm away the wakeful night In Araby, romances; legends penned For solace by dim light of monkish lamps; Fictions, for ladies of their love, devised By youthful squires; adventures endless, spun 500 By the dismantled warrior in old age, Out of the bowels of those very schemes In which his youth did first extravagate; These spread like day, and something in the shape Of these will live till man shall be no more.

505 Dumb yearnings, hidden appetites, are ours, And _they must_ have their food.

Our childhood sits, Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne That hath more power than all the elements.
I guess not what this tells of Being past, 510 Nor what it augurs of the life to come; [Q] But so it is, and, in that dubious hour, That twilight when we first begin to see This dawning earth, to recognise, expect, And in the long probation that ensues, 515 The time of trial, ere we learn to live In reconcilement with our stinted powers; To endure this state of meagre vassalage, Unwilling to forego, confess, submit, Uneasy and unsettled, yoke-fellows 520 To custom, mettlesome, and not yet tamed And humbled down; oh! then we feel, we feel, We know where we have friends.

Ye dreamers, then, Forgers of daring tales! we bless you then, Impostors, drivellers, dotards, as the ape 525 Philosophy will call you: _then_ we feel With what, and how great might ye are in league, Who make our wish, our power, our thought a deed, An empire, a possession,--ye whom time And seasons serve; all Faculties to whom 530 Earth crouches, the elements are potter's clay, Space like a heaven filled up with northern lights, Here, nowhere, there, and everywhere at once.
Relinquishing this lofty eminence For ground, though humbler, not the less a tract 535 Of the same isthmus, which our spirits cross In progress from their native continent To earth and human life, the Song might dwell On that delightful time of growing youth, When craving for the marvellous gives way 540 To strengthening love for things that we have seen; When sober truth and steady sympathies, Offered to notice by less daring pens, Take firmer hold of us, and words themselves Move us with conscious pleasure.
I am sad 545 At thought of raptures now for ever flown; [R] Almost to tears I sometimes could be sad To think of, to read over, many a page, Poems withal of name, which at that time Did never fail to entrance me, and are now 550 Dead in my eyes, dead as a theatre Fresh emptied of spectators.

Twice five years Or less I might have seen, when first my mind With conscious pleasure opened to the charm Of words in tuneful order, found them sweet 555 For their own _sakes_, a passion, and a power; And phrases pleased me chosen for delight, For pomp, or love.