Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/241

BOOK VIII.] In coronal, with Phyllis in the midst—

Was, for the purposes of kind, a man

With the most common; husband, father; learned,

Could teach, admonish; suffered with the rest

From vice and folly, wretchedness and fear;

Of this I little saw, cared less for it,

But something must have felt.

Call ye these appearances—

Which I beheld of shepherds in my youth,

This sanctity of Nature given to man—

A shadow, a delusion, ye who pore

On the dead letter, miss the spirit of things;

Whose truth is not a motion or a shape

Instinct with vital functions, but a block

Or waxen image which yourselves have made,

And ye adore! But blessed be the God

Of Nature and of Man that this was so;

That men before my inexperienced eyes

Did first present themselves thus purified,

Removed, and to a distance that was fit:

And so we all of us in some degree

Are led to knowledge, wheresoever led,

And howsoever; were it otherwise,

And we found evil fast as we find good

In our first years, or think that it is found,