Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/213

BOOK VII.] And yielded to all changes of the scene

With an obsequious promptness, yet the storm

Passed not beyond the suburbs of the mind;

Save when realities of act and mien,

The incarnation of the spirits that move

In harmony amid the Poet's world,

Rose to ideal grandeur, or, called forth

By power of contrast, made me recognise,

As at a glance, the things which I had shaped,

And yet not shaped, had seen and scarcely seen,

When, having closed the mighty Shakspeare's page,

I mused, and thought, and felt, in solitude.

Pass we from entertainments, that are such

Professedly, to others titled higher,

Yet, in the estimate of youth at least,

More near akin to those than names imply,—

I mean the brawls of lawyers in their courts

Before the ermined judge, or that great stage

Where senators, tongue-favoured men, perform,

Admired and envied. Oh! the beating heart,

When one among the prime of these rose up,—

One, of whose name from childhood we had heard

Familiarly, a household term, like those,

The Bedfords, Glosters, Salsburys, of old