Wordsworth’s poem reflects my thoughts when as a ten-year-old at boarding school, thoroughly loved Nature and all she gave. I even won third prize in a gardening competition! An excerpt from William Wordsworth’s ‘SCHOOL-TIME’ certainly takes me back to those sunny times in the 1950s, when summer holidays seemed to last for months on end and it always snowed on Christmas Day.
School Time
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
1770 – 1850
What spring and autumn, what winter snows,
And what the summer shade, what day and night,
The evening and the morning, what my dreams
And what my waking thoughts, supplied to nurse
That spirit of religious love in which
I walked with Nature. But let this at least
Be not forgotten, that I still retained
My first creative sensibility,
That by the regular action of the world
My soul was unsubdued.
Featured Image of William Wordsworth attribution to William Shuter., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons