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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Introductory

Highways

By William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

From “The Prelude

WHO doth not love to follow with his eye

The winding of a public way? the sight,

Familiar object as it is, hath wrought

On my imagination since the morn

Of childhood, when a disappearing line,

One daily present to my eyes, that crossed

The naked summit of a far-off hill

Beyond the limits that my feet had trod,

Was like an invitation into space

Boundless, or guide into eternity.

Yes, something of the grandeur which invests

The mariner who sails the roaring sea

Through storm and darkness, early in my mind

Surrounded too the wanderers of the earth;

Grandeur as much, and loveliness far more.