"'Tis granted, and no plainer truth appears,  / Our most important are our earliest years.  / The mind impressible and soft, with ease  / Imbibes and copies what she hears and sees, / And through life's labyrinth holds fast the clue  /That education gives her, false or true."
The Progress of Error
See <u>Poems by William Cowper</u> (London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1782). &lt;<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=IMcNAAAAQAAJ">Link to Google Books</a>&gt;&lt;<a href="http://name.umdl.umich.edu/004792651.0001.000">Link to ECCO-TCP</a>&gt;<br>
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Text from <u>The Works of William Cowper</u> (London: Baldwin and Cradock, 1835-1837).<br>
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Reading <u>The Poems of William Cowper</u>, 3 vols. ed. John D. Baird and Charles Ryskamp (Oxford: Oxford UP: 1980), I, pp. 262-279.