Youth in the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it so ) out imagination has a body to it.

We are in a state between sleeping and waking,

and have indistinct but glorious glimpses of strange shapes,

and there is always something to come better than what we see.

As in our dreams the fullness

of the blood gives warmth and reality to the coinage of the brain,

so in youth our ideas are clothed, and fed,

and pampered with our good spirits;

we breathe thick with thoughtless happiness,

the weight of future years presses on the strong pulses of the heart,

and we repose with undisturbed faith in truth and good.

As we advance,

we exhaust out fund of enjoyment and of hope.

We are no longer wrapped in lamb’s-wool, lulled in Elysium.

As we taste the pleasureds of life,

their spirit evaporates, the sense palls;

and nothing is left but the phantoms,

the lifeless shadows of what has been!!



William Hazlitt (1778-1830)]
My First Acquaintance With Poets