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.