Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/134

112 To cleave unto this man; but when I prayed

To share his enterprise, he hurried on

Reckless of me: I followed, not unseen,

For oftentimes he cast a backward look,

Grasping his twofold treasure.—Lance in rest,

He rode, I keeping pace with him; and now

He, to my fancy, had become the knight

Whose tale Cervantes tells; yet not the knight,

But was an Arab of the desert too;

Of these was neither, and was both at once.

His countenance, meanwhile, grew more disturbed;

And, looking backwards when he looked, mine eyes

Saw, over half the wilderness diffused,

A bed of glittering light: I asked the cause:

"It is," said he, "the waters of the deep

Gathering upon us;" quickening then the pace

Of the unwieldly creature he bestrode,

He left me: I called after him aloud;

He heeded not; but, with his twofold charge

Still in his grasp, before me, full in view,

Went hurrying o'er the illimitable waste,

With the fleet waters of a drowning world

In chase of him; whereat I waked in terror,

And saw the sea before me, and the book,

In which I had been reading, at my side.