Enchanting age and sweet! Romantic almost, looked at through a space, How small, of intervening years! For then, Though surely no mean progress had been made In meditations holy and sublime, 445 Yet something of a girlish child-like gloss Of novelty survived for scenes like these; Enjoyment haply handed down from times When at a country-playhouse, some rude barn Tricked out for that proud use, if I perchance 450 Caught, on a summer evening through a chink In the old wall, an unexpected glimpse Of daylight, the bare thought of where I was Gladdened me more than if I had been led Into a dazzling cavern of romance, 455 Crowded with Genii busy among works Not to be looked at by the common sun.
The matter that detains us now may seem, To many, neither dignified enough Nor arduous, yet will not be scorned by them, 460 Who, looking inward, have observed the ties That bind the perishable hours of life Each to the other, and the curious props By which the world of memory and thought Exists and is sustained.

More lofty themes, 465 Such as at least do wear a prouder face, Solicit our regard; but when I think Of these, I feel the imaginative power Languish within me; even then it slept, When, pressed by tragic sufferings, the heart 470 Was more than full; amid my sobs and tears It slept, even in the pregnant season of youth.
For though I was most passionately moved And yielded to all changes of the scene With an obsequious promptness, yet the storm 475 Passed not beyond the suburbs of the mind; Save when realities of act and mien, The incarnation of the spirits that move In harmony amid the Poet's world, Rose to ideal grandeur, or, called forth 480 By power of contrast, made me recognise, As at a glance, the things which I had shaped, And yet not shaped, had seen and scarcely seen, When, having closed the mighty Shakespeare's page, I mused, and thought, and felt, in solitude.

485 Pass we from entertainments, that are such Professedly, to others titled higher, Yet, in the estimate of youth at least, More near akin to those than names imply,-- I mean the brawls of lawyers in their courts 490 Before the ermined judge, or that great stage [X] Where senators, tongue-favoured men, perform, Admired and envied.

Oh! the beating heart, When one among the prime of these rose up,-- One, of whose name from childhood we had heard 495 Familiarly, a household term, like those, The Bedfords, Glosters, Salsburys, of old Whom the fifth Harry talks of.

[Y] Silence! hush! This is no trifler, no short-flighted wit, No stammerer of a minute, painfully 500 Delivered.