Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/251

225 The very multitude are free to range—

We safely may affirm that human life

Is either fair or tempting, a soft scene

Grateful to sight, refreshing to the soul,

Or a forbidding tract of cheerless view;

Even as the same is looked at, or approached.

Permit me," said the Priest continuing, "here

To use an illustration of my thought,

Drawn from the very spot on which we stand.

—In changeful April, when, as he is wont,

Winter has reassumed a short lived sway

And whitened all the surface of the fields,

If—from the sullen region of the North

Towards the circuit of this holy ground

Your walk conducts you, ere the vigorous sun,

High climbing, hath attained his noon-tide height—

These Mounds, transversely lying side by side

From east to west, before you will appear

A dreary plain of unillumined snow,

With more than wintry cheerlessness and gloom

Saddening the heart. Go forward, and look back;

On the same circuit of this church-yard ground

Look, from the quarter whence the Lord of light,