Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/296

270 Of kindred import, pleased and satisfied,

Was forced to vent his wisdom with a sigh

Heaved from the heart in fortune's bitterness

When he had crushed a plentiful estate

By ruinous Contest, to obtain a Seat

In Britain's Senate. Fruitless was the attempt:

And while the uproar of that desperate strife

Continued yet to vibrate on his ear,

The vanquished Whig, beneath a borrowed name,

(For the mere sound and echo of his own

Haunted him with sensations of disgust

Which he was glad to lose) slunk from the World

To the deep shade of these untravelled Wilds;

In which the Scottish Laird had long possessed

An undisturbed Abode.—Here, then, they met,

Two doughty Champions; flaming Jacobite

And sullen Hanoverian! You might think

That losses and vexations, less severe

Than those which they had severally sustained,

Would have inclined each to abate his zeal

For his ungrateful cause; no,—I have heard

My reverend Father tell that, mid the calm

Of that small Town encountering thus, they filled,