Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1.djvu/180

1800. not more poetical than that of any Cumberland beg­gar he might have met in his morning walk:—


 * "Long-wished-for sight, the Western World appeared;
 * And when the ship was moored, I leaped ashore
 * Indignantly,—resolved to be a man,


 * Who, having o'er the past no power, would live
 * No longer in subjection to the past,
 * With abject mind—from a tyrannic lord
 * Inviting penance, fruitlessly endured.


 * So, like a fugitive whose feet have cleared
 * Some boundary which his followers may not cross
 * In prosecution of their deadly chase,


 * Respiring, I looked round. How bright the sun,
 * The breeze how soft! Can anything produced
 * In the Old World compare, thought I, for power
 * And majesty, with this tremendous stream


 * Sprung from the desert? And behold a city
 * Fresh, youthful, and aspiring! . ..


 * Sooth to say,
 * On nearer view, a motley spectacle
 * Appeared, of high pretensions—unreproved
 * But by the obstreperous voice of higher still;


 * Big passions strutting on a petty stage,
 * Which a detached spectator may regard
 * Not unamused. But ridicule demands
 * Quick change of objects; and to laugh alone,


 * . . . in the very centre of the crowd
 * To keep the secret of a poignant scorn,
 * . . . is least fit
 * For the gross spirit of mankind."

Thus Wordsworth, although then at his prime, in­dulging in what sounded like a boast that he alone had felt the sense sublime of something interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the