Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/208

186 He was in limb, in cheek a summer rose

Just three parts blown—a cottage-child—if e'er,

By cottage-door on breezy mountain side,

Or in some sheltering vale, was seen a babe

By Nature's gifts so favoured. Upon a board

Decked with refreshments had this child been placed,

His little stage in the vast theatre,

And there he sate surrounded with a throng

Of chance spectators, chiefly dissolute men

And shameless women, treated and caressed;

Ate, drank, and with the fruit and glasses played,

While oaths and laughter and indecent speech

Were rife about him as the songs of birds

Contending after showers. The mother now

Is fading out of memory, but I see

The lovely Boy as I beheld him then

Among the wretched and the falsely gay,

Like one of those who walked with hair unsinged

Amid the fiery furnace. Charms and spells

Muttered on black and spiteful instigation

Have stopped, as some believe, the kindliest growths.

Ah, with how different spirit might a prayer

Have been preferred, that this fair creature, checked

By special privilege of Nature's love,

Should in his childhood be detained for ever!