Part 1 — TO WORDSWORTH.

Great poet, I have tasted and admired These many years, but known thee only now— With nine-and-twenty winters on my brow, And much beside that oft thy page inspired. I find in thee a freshness long desired: And take thy song as migrant bird a lake, Which first she shunn’d, yet could not all forsake, Till, last, she nests there—never to be tired. To nature I have ever turn’d with love, But now more fondly, from the world of men. ’Twas erst for sympathy: with Byron then: But now, with thee, religiously—to prove The sweets of contemplation, and emove In other minds high thought and holy ken.