Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/180

154 "From your Progenitors, have Ye received,

"Fit recompence of new desert? what claim

"Are ye prepared to urge, that my decrees

"For you should undergo a sudden change;

"And the weak functions of one busy day,

"Reclaiming and extirpating, perform

"What all the slowly-moving Years of Time,

"With their united force, have left undone?

"By Nature's gradual processes be taught,

"By Story be confounded. Ye aspire

"Rashly, to fall once more; and that false fruit,

"Which, to your over-weening spirits, yields

"Hope of a flight celestial, will produce

"Misery and shame. But Wisdom of her sons

"Shall not the less, though late, be justified."

Such timely warning," said the Wanderer, "gave

That visionary Voice; and, at this day,

When a Tartarian darkness overspreads

The groaning nations; when the Impious rule,

By will or by established ordinance,

Their own dire agents, and constrain the Good

To acts which they abhor; though I bewail

This triumph, yet the pity of my heart