Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/350

324 With each repeating its allotted prayer,

And thus divides and thus relieves the time;

Smooth task, with his compared! whose mind could string,

Not scantily, bright minutes on the thread

Of keen domestic anguish,—and beguile

A solitude, unchosen, unprofessed;

Till gentlest death released him.—Far from us

Be the desire—too curiously to ask

How much of this is but the blind result

Of cordial spirits and vital temperament,

And what to higher powers is justly due.

But you, Sir, know that in a neighbouring Vale

A Priest abides before whose life such doubts

Fall to the ground; whose gifts of nature lie

Retired from notice, lost in attributes

Of Reason,—honourably effaced by debts

Which her poor treasure-house is content to owe,

And conquests over her dominion gained,

To which her frowardness must needs submit.

In this one Man is shown a temperance—proof

Against all trials; industry severe

And constant as the motion of the day;

Stern self-denial round him spread, with shade