Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/179

153 Shrinking from admonition, like a man

Who feels, that to exhort, is to reproach.

Yet not to be diverted from his aim,

The Sage continued.—"For that other loss,

The loss of confidence in social Man,

By the unexpected transports of our Age

Carried so high, that every thought—which looked

Beyond the temporal destiny of the Kind—

To many seemed superfluous; as, no cause

For such exalted confidence could e'er

Exist; so, none is now for such despair:

The two extremes are equally remote

From Truth and Reason;—do not, then, confound

One with the other, but reject them both;

And choose the middle point, whereon to build

Sound expectations. This doth he advise

Who shared at first the illusion; but was soon

Cast from the pedestal of pride by shocks

Which Nature gently gave, in woods and fields;

Nor unreproved by Providence, thus speaking

To the inattentive Children of the World,

"Vain-glorious Generation! what new powers

"On you have been conferred? what gifts, withheld