Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/194

168 And nurse "the dreadful appetite of death?"

If tired with Systems—each in its degree

Substantial—and all crumbling in their turn,

Let him build Systems of his own, and smile

At the fond work—demolished with a touch;

If unreligious, let him be at once,

Among ten thousand Innocents, enrolled

A Pupil in the many-chambered school,

Where Superstition weaves her airy dreams.

Life's Autumn past, I stand on Winter's verge,

And daily lose what I desire to keep:

Yet rather would I instantly decline

To the traditionary sympathies

Of a most rustic ignorance, and take

A fearful apprehension from the owl

Or death-watch,—and as readily rejoice,

If two auspicious magpies crossed my way;

This rather would I do than see and hear

The repetitions wearisome of sense,

Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place;

Where knowledge, ill begun in cold remark

On outward things, with formal inference ends