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LINES 81-95 Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, not any interest Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompense. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. Lines 81-95 build on the descriptions of the speaker’s younger self. By transitioning from the specific, discrete descriptions of the “rock” and “mountain” and “wood” to the general “colours” and “forms” of the landscape, the speaker echoes his previous use of the phrase “beauteous forms” to describe the landscape, and its allusion to the ideal forms in Platonic thought. At the same time, this shift indicates the changes the speaker himself has undergone: he now can see the aspects of the landscape not as he saw them then (specific, discrete elements) but as integrated and whole. He also, the poem implicitly suggests, has gained insight into his former self, by being able to describe not only how he felt previously but also what these feelings meant. Specifically, the speaker says that the landscape was to him then an “appetite; a feeling and a love.” The word “appetite” recalls his comparison of the place to “food” for future years, yet it also suggests something less sophisticated or “coars[er]” in the speaker’s previous relationship to the natural world—as something he hungered for, yet perhaps did not fully appreciate. And indeed, the speaker goes on to say that his previous “feeling” for the setting “had no need of a remoter charm / By thought supplied.” In other words, the speaker’s younger self didn’t (or perhaps couldn’t) truly think about his experience and gain pleasure from this thought. Similarly, he says, his former self had no “interest / Unborrowed from the eye”— suggesting that the younger speaker was more connected to his senses than his intellect, or than his more deeply spiritual self and consciousness. The speaker suggests that with the passage of time he has grown in spiritual and intellectual ways, since he now, implicitly, does have that “need of a remoter charm,” or of more elevated thought that allows him to truly appreciate the beauty of this setting. Indeed, that "time is past," the speaker insists after the pause of a caesura in the middle of line 85, which conveys on a formal level that passage of time. As a younger man, the speaker's life was exciting but also stressful, an idea conveyed by the oxymoron of "aching"—or painful—"joys" and "dizzy raptures," or feelings so intense that they made the speaker feel disoriented and unstable. Essentially, the speaker has mellowed out a bit over the past five years, yet he does not "mourn" for the lost intensity of his youth. Growing up brings its own "other gifts," he insists, that more than make up for (offer "Abundant recompense") the "loss" of youthful exuberance. So what has the speaker gained? Again, it's the ability to "look on nature"—to really appreciate it in a way that he was not able to as a "thoughtless youth." This doesn't mean he now looks at the world through rose-colored glasses; he makes clear that he's not overly optimistic or naive. Both in the past and now he can often hear the "still sad music of humanity"—meaning he recognizes the difficulties and loneliness of being a human being—but he no longer finds that metaphorical "music" to be "harsh nor grating." Instead, he appreciates the full extent of human experience and doesn't run away from its ups nor its downs—the latter of which he's realized have the "ample power/ To chasten and subdue"—that is, to lessen and calm the "aching" and dizziness mentioned earlier. It seems getting older has some benefits!