Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/158

132 Is still the sport! Here Nature Mas my guide,

The Nature of the dissolute; but Thee,

O fostering Nature! I rejected, smiled

At others' tears in pity; and in scorn

At those, which thy soft influence sometimes drew

From my unguarded heart.—The tranquil shores

Of Britain circumscribed me; else, perhaps,

I might have been entangled among deeds,

Which, now, as infamous, I should abhor—

Despise, as senseless: for I strangely relished

The exasperated spirit of that Land,

Which turned an angry beak against the down

Of its own breast; as if it hoped, thereby,

To disencumber its impatient wings.

—But all was quieted by iron bonds

Of military sway. The shifting aims,

The moral interests, the creative might,

The varied functions and high attributes

Of civil Action, yielded to a Power

Formal, and odious, and contemptible.

—In Britain, ruled a panic dread of change;

The weak were praised, rewarded, and advanced;

And, from the impulse of a just disdain,