Not only around our infancy, etc.: The allusion is to
James Russell Lowell
Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_, especially these
lines:
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."
As Lowell's central theme is so intimately associated with that of
Wordsworth's poem, if not directly suggested by it, the two poems
should be read together and compared. Lowell maintains that "heaven
lies about us" not only in our infancy, but at all times, if only we
have the soul to comprehend it.