Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/295

269 With his brave sword endeavoured to prevent

Culloden's fatal overthrow.—Escaped

From that disastrous rout, to foreign shores

He fled; and when the lenient hand of Time

Those troubles had appeased, he sought and gained,

For his obscured condition, an obscure

Retreat, within this nook of English ground.

—The Other, born in Britain's southern tract,

Had fixed his milder loyalty, and placed

His gentler sentiments of love and hate,

There, where they placed them who in conscience prized

The new succession, as a line of Kings

Whose oath had virtue to protect the Land

Against the dire assaults of Papacy

And arbitrary Rule. But launch thy Bark

On the distempered flood of public life,

And cause for most rare triumph will be thine

If, spite of keenest eye and steadiest hand,

The Stream, that bears thee forward, prove not, soon

Or late, a perilous Master. He, who oft,

Under the battlements and stately trees

That round his Mansion cast a sober gloom,

Had moralized on this, and other truths