Fair seed-time had my soul

from The Prelude: Book 1: Childhood and School-time
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
—Was it for this
That one, the fairest of all Rivers, lov’d
To blend his murmurs with my Nurse’s song,
And from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flow’d along my dreams? For this, didst Thou,
O Derwent! travelling over the green Plains
Near my ‘sweet Birthplace’, didst thou, beauteous Stream
Make ceaseless music through the night and day
Which with its steady cadence, tempering
Our human waywardness, compos’d my thoughts
To more than infant softness, giving me,
Among the fretful dwellings of mankind,
A knowledge, a dim earnest, of the calm
That Nature breathes among the hills and groves.
When, having left his Mountains, to the Towers
Of Cockermouth that beauteous River came,
Behind my Father’s House he pass’d, close by,
Along the margin of our Terrace Walk.
He was a Playmate whom we dearly lov’d.
Oh! many a time have I, a five years’ Child,
A naked Boy, in one delightful Rill,
A little Mill-race sever’d from his stream,
Made one long bathing of a summer’s day,
Bask’d in the sun, and plunged, and bask’d again
Alternate all a summer’s day, or cours’d
Over the sandy fields, leaping through groves
Of yellow grunsel, or when crag and hill,
The woods, and distant Skiddaw’s lofty height,
Were bronz’d with a deep radiance, stood alone
Beneath the sky, as if I had been born
On Indian Plains, and from my Mother’s hut
Had run abroad in wantonness, to sport,
A naked Savage, in the thunder shower.

Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up
Foster’d alike by beauty and by fear;
Much favour’d in my birthplace, and no less
In that beloved Vale to which, erelong,
I was transplanted.

I woke this morning thinking of an old professor, Patrick H. Hutton, who taught history and philosophy and a number of other integrated subjects in the humanities. I remember reading Wordsworth’s Prelude with him. It was like drinking cool water on a hot day; finding that doorway into the beautiful building that you have always wanted to visit. I am jotting down these thoughts more or less as a paean to Dr. Hutton, who spent countless additional moments, sometimes hours, with me a long way from home, helping me discover the kinship that I share with Wordsworth in finding a deep and beautiful music within “nature.”

Having passed through numerous stacks of books and subjects since that time in college, I am delightfully surprised and refreshed by merely hearing those opening lines of The Prelude; finding myself sitting in that classroom, pretending to know far more than life had yet to teach me. Discovering that a good and kind teacher, arriving at the critical moment, can actually change a life; setting the course for many lives that follow.