Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/217

191 Lies open: we have heard from You a voice

At every moment softened in its course

By tenderness of heart; have seen your Eye,

Even like an Altar lit by fire from Heaven,

Kindle before us.—Your discourse this day,

That, like the fabled Lethe, wished to flow

In creeping sadness, through oblivious shades

Of death and night, has caught at every turn

The colours of the Sun. Access for you

Is yet preserved to principles of truth,

Which the Imaginative Will upholds

In seats of wisdom, not to be approached

By the inferior Faculty that moulds,

With her minute and speculative pains,

Opinion, ever changing!—I have seen

A curious Child, who dwelt upon a tract

Of inland ground, applying to his ear

The convolutions of a smooth-lipped Shell;

To which, in silence hushed, his very soul

Listened intensely; and his countenance soon

Brightened with joy; for murmurings from within

Were heard,—sonorous cadences! whereby,

To his belief, the Monitor expressed