Oft, when a child, while wand’ring far alone,

That none might rouse me from my waking dream,

And visions with which fancy still would teem

Scare by a disenchanting earthly tone;

If, haply, conscious of the present scene,

I’ve marked before me some untraversed spot

The setting sunbeams had forsaken not,

Whose turf appeared more velvet-like and green

Than that I walked and fitter for repose:

But ever, at the wished-for place arrived,

I’ve found it of those seeming charms deprived

Which from the mellowing power of distance rose:

To my poor thought, an apt though simple trope

Of life’s dull path and earth’s deceitful hope.