With one bound....

This is something written over three hundred year ago by William Wordsworth. I first came across it just over fifty years ago but read it again last night in an anthology. Yes - a sad life is being led. Poetry at bedtime - it will be Ovaltine next!

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD

William Wordsworth

Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,

This reminded me that I was obsessed at the time by this thought - how could I avoid this shading of the prison-house? As was the custom of those times, the ode was dissected out to the smallest detail and I discovered that it was not a literal fate but rather that the joys of childhood soon gave way to the facts of life as a middle aged adult and then an old person. This did not bother me too much as I accepted - indeed, sought, that maturity had to come but I was still aware of my first scare about the shades of the prison-house being opressive and limiting. How long was one in the prison? How did one escape?

I determined that I would be a growing boy who proved that prison-house was not inevitable. If this needed some Peter Pan syndrome, OK by me. So far as I am concerned, the most serious rigours of adulthood passed me by. I had a considerable degree of autonomy in what I did all through my working life and I was not afraid to stretch the rubber band where necessary.

All that seems to me to have changed. I have as much liberty now as ever I had but I feel the anology of the prison-house. Much of what I enjoyed by expressing my Peter Pan attitude is lost to me by age and nagging infirmity. Even some of the desire to play 'young boy' has left me. So, old William was right after all. All I have done is redefine 'young boy' so I suppose that is something to hold onto.

The same work includes another idea that I also endorse -

The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day,
The things which I have seen
I now can see no more

And that has nothing to do with eye-tests!!