Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 2.djvu/312

304 Of this old Mendicant, and, from her door

Returning with exhilarated heart,

Sits by her fire and builds her hope in heaven.

Then let him pass, a blessing on his head!

.And while in that vast solitude to which

The tide of things has led him, he appears

To breathe and live but for himself alone,

Unblamed, uninjured, let him bear about

The good which the benignant law of Heaven

Has hung around him; and, while life is his,

Still let him prompt the unlettered Villagers

To tender offices and pensive thoughts.

—Then let him pass, a blessing on his head!

And, long as he can wander, let him breathe

The freshness of the valleys; let his blood

Struggle with frosty air and winter snows;

And let the chartered wind that sweeps the heath

Beat his gray locks against his withered face.

Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness

Gives the last human interest to his heart.

May never, misnamed of ,

Make him a captive! for that pent-up din,

Those life-consuming sounds that clog the air,