. Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
 For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
 Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
 Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
 But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,
 In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
 Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
 The attraction of a country in romance!
 When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
 When most intent on making of herself
 A prime Enchantress--to assist the work
 Which then was going forward in her name!
 Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
 The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
 (As at some moment might not be unfelt
 Among the bowers of paradise itself )
 The budding rose above the rose full blown.
 What temper at the prospect did not wake
 To happiness unthought of? The inert
 Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
 They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
 The playfellows of fancy, who had made
 All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
 Their ministers,--who in lordly wise had stirred
 Among the grandest objects of the sense,
 And dealt with whatsoever they found there
 As if they had within some lurking right
 To wield it;--they, too, who, of gentle mood,
 Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
 Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more wild,
 And in the region of their peaceful selves;--
 Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
 Did both find, helpers to their heart's desire,
 And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;
 Wcre called upon to exercise their skill,
 Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,
 Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
 But in the very world, which is the world
 Of all of us,--the place where in the end
 We find our happiness, or not at all!