and the spirit of contemplation lingers still; whether the silent
avenues stand in the summer twilight filled with fragrance of the
lime, or the long rows of chestnut engirdle the autumn river-lawns
with walls of golden glow, or the tall elms cluster in garden or
_Wilderness_ into towering citadels of green. Beneath one
exquisite ash-tree, wreathed with ivy, and hung in autumn with
yellow tassels from every spray, Wordsworth used to linger long
"Scarcely Spenser's self," he tells us,

Could have more tranquil visions in his youth,
Or could more bright appearances create
Of human forms with superhuman powers,
Than I beheld loitering on calm clear nights
Alone, beneath this fairy work of earth.

And there was another element in Wordsworth's life at Cambridge more
peculiarly his own--that exultation which a boy born among the
mountains may feel when he perceives that the delight in the
external world which the mountains have taught him has not perished
by uprooting, nor waned for want of nourishment in field or fen; that
even here, where nature is unadorned, and scenery, as it were,
reduced to its elements,--where the prospect is but the plain
surface of the earth, stretched wide beneath an open heaven,--even
here he can still feel the early glow, can take delight in that
broad and tranquil greenness, and in the august procession of the day.

As if awakened, summoned, roused, constrained,
I looked for universal things; perused
The common countenance of earth and sky--
Earth, nowhere unembellished by some trace