Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/196

170 Fell Human-kind—to banishment condemned

That flowing years repealed not: and distress

And grief spread wide; but Man escaped the doom

Of destitution;—Solitude was not.

—Jehovah—shapeless Power above all Powers,

Single and one, the omnipresent God,

By vocal utterance, or blaze of light,

Or cloud of darkness, localized in heaven,

On earth, enshrined within the wandering ark;

Or, out of Sion, thundering from his throne

Between the Cherubim—on the chosen Race

Showered miracles, and ceased not to dispense

Judgments, that filled the Land from age to age

With hope, and love, and gratitude, and fear;

And with amazement smote;—thereby to assert

His scorned, or unacknowledged Sovereignty.

And when the One, ineffable of name,

In nature indivisible, withdrew

From mortal adoration or regard,

Not then was Deity engulphed, nor Man,

The rational Creature, left, to feel the weight

Of his own reason, without sense or thought

Of higher reason and a purer will,