The poet’s youthful disappointment with Cambridge University brings intriguing complication to a perennial complaint
‘Residence at Cambridge’
(Book Three, The Prelude)
Not that I slighted Books; that were to lack
All sense, but other passions had been mine,
More fervent, making me less prompt, perhaps,
To in-door study than was wise or well,
Or suited to my years. Yet I could shape
The image of a Place, which, sooth’d and lull’d
As I had been, train’d up in paradise
Among sweet garlands and delightful sounds,
Accustom’d in my loneliness to walk
With Nature magisterially, yet I
Methinks could shape the image of a Place
Which with its aspect should have bent me down
To instantaneous service, should at once
Have made me pay to science and to arts
And written lore, acknowledg’d my liege Lord,
A homage frankly offer’d up like that
Which I had paid to Nature. Toil and pains
In this recess which I have bodied forth
Should spread from heart to heart; and stately groves,
Majestic edifices, should not want
A corresponding dignity within.
The congregating temper, which pervades
Our unripe years, not wasted, should be made
To minister to works of high attempt,
Which the enthusiast would perform with love;
Youth should be aw’d, possessed as with a sense
Religious, of what holy joy there is
In knowledge, if it be sincerely sought
For its own sake, in glory, and in praise,
If but by labour won, and fit to endure.
The passing Day should learn to put aside
Her trappings here, should strip them off, abash’d,
Before antiquity and stedfast truth
And strong book-mindedness; and over all
should be a healthy sound simplicity,
A seemly plainness, name it as you will,
Republican or pious. If these thoughts
be a gratuitous emblazonry
That does but mock this recreant age, at least
Let Folly and False-seeming, we might say,
Be free to affect whatever formal gait
Of moral or scholastic discipline
Shall raise them highest in their own esteem;
Let them parade among the Schools at will,
But spare the House of God. Was ever known
The witless Shepherd who would drive his Flock
With serious repetition to a pool
Of which ’tis plain to sight they never taste.