Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/163

BOOK VI.] Which—to the boundaries of space and time,

Of melancholy space and doleful time,

Superior, and incapable of change,

Nor touched by welterings of passion—is,

And hath the name of, God. Transcendent peace

And silence did await upon these thoughts

That were a frequent comfort to my youth.

'Tis told by one whom stormy waters threw,

With fellow-sufferers by the shipwreck spared,

Upon a desert coast, that having brought

To land a single volume, saved by chance,

A treatise of Geometry, he wont,

Although of food and clothing destitute,

And beyond common wretchedness depressed,

To part from company and take this book

(Then first a self-taught pupil in its truths)

To spots remote, and draw his diagrams

With a long staff upon the sand, and thus

Did oft beguile his sorrow, and almost

Forget his feeling: so (if like effect

From the same cause produced, 'mid outward things

So different, may rightly be compared),

So was it then with me, and so will be

With Poets ever. Mighty is the charm