Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/214

192 Whom the fifth Harry talks of. Silence! hush!

This is no trifler, no short -flighted wit,

No stammerer of a minute, painfully

Delivered. No! the Orator hath yoked

The Hours, like young Aurora, to his car:

Thrice welcome Presence! how can patience e'er

Grow weary of attending on a track

That kindles with such glory! All are charmed,

Astonished; like a hero in romance,

He winds away his never-ending horn;

Words follow words, sense seems to follow sense:

What memory and what logic! till the strain

Transcendent, superhuman as it seemed,

Grows tedious even in a young man's ear.

Genius of Burke! forgive the pen seduced

By specious wonders, and too slow to tell

Of what the ingenuous, what bewildered men,

Beginning to mistrust their boastful guides,

And wise men, willing to grow wiser, caught,

Rapt auditors! from thy most eloquent tongue—

Now mute, for ever mute in the cold grave.

I see him,—old, but vigorous in age,—

Stand like an oak whose stag-horn branches start

Out of its leafy brow, the more to awe