Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/162

140 To carry meaning to the natural heart;

To tell us what is passion, what is truth,

What reason, what simplicity and sense.

Yet may we not entirely overlook

The pleasure gathered from the rudiments

Of geometric science. Though advanced

In these inquiries, with regret I speak,

No farther than the threshold, there I found

Both elevation and composed delight:

With Indian awe and wonder, ignorance pleased

With its own struggles, did I meditate

On the relation those abstractions bear

To Nature's laws, and by what process led,

Those immaterial agents bowed their heads

Duly to serve the mind of earth-born man;

From star to star, from kindred sphere to sphere,

From system on to system without end.

More frequently from the same source I drew

A pleasure quiet and profound, a sense

Of permanent and universal sway,

And paramount belief; there, recognised

A type, for finite natures, of the one

Supreme Existence, the surpassing life