Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/79

53 Each with the other pleased, we now pursued

Our journey—beneath favourable skies.

Turn wheresoe'er we would, he was a light

Unfailing: not a Hamlet could we pass,

Rarely a House, which did not yield to him

Remembrances; or from his tongue call forth

Some way-beguiling tale. Nor less regard

Accompanied those strains of apt discourse,

Which Nature's various objects might supply:

And in the silence of his face I read

His overflowing spirit. Birds and beasts,

And the mute fish that glances in the stream,

And harmless reptile coiling in the sun,

And gorgeous insect hovering in the air,

The fowl domestic, and the household dog,

In his capacious mind—he loved them all:

Their rights acknowledging he felt for all.

Oft was occasion given me to perceive

How the calm pleasures of the pasturing Herd

To happy contemplation soothed his walk

Along the field, and in the shady grove;

How the poor Brute's condition, forced to run

Its course of suffering in the public road,