Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/18

xii Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out

By help of dreams, can breed such fear and awe

As fall upon us often when we look

Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man,

My haunt, and the main region of my Song,

—Beauty—a living Presence of the earth,

Surpassing the most fair ideal Forms

Which craft of delicate Spirits hath composed

From earth's materials—waits upon my steps;

Pitches her tents before me as I move,

An hourly neighbour. Paradise, and groves

Elysian, Fortunate Fields—like those of old

Sought in the Atlantic Main, why should they be

A history only of departed things,

Or a mere fiction of what never was?

For the discerning intellect of Man,

When wedded to this goodly universe

In love and holy passion, shall find these

A simple produce of the common day.

—I, long before the blissful hour arrives,

Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse

Of this great consummation:—and, by words

Which speak of nothing more than what we are,

Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep

Of Death, and win the vacant and the vain

To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims

How exquisitely the individual Mind

(And the progressive powers perhaps no less

Of the whole species) to the external World

Is fitted:—and how exquisitely, too,