Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/247

BOOK VIII.] Incited it to motion, and controlled.

I did not pine like one in cities bred,

As was thy melancholy lot, dear Friend!

Great Spirit as thou art, in endless dreams

Of sickliness, disjoining, joining, things

Without the light of knowledge. Where the harm,

If, when the woodman languished with disease

Induced by sleeping nightly on the ground

Within his sod-built cabin, Indian-wise,

I called the pangs of disappointed love,

And all the sad etcetera of the wrong,

To help him to his grave. Meanwhile the man,

If not already from the woods retired

To die at home, was haply as I knew,

Withering by slow degrees, 'mid gentle airs,

Birds, running streams, and hills so beautiful

On golden evenings, while the charcoal pile

Breathed up its smoke, an image of his ghost

Or spirit that full soon must take her flight.

Nor shall we not be tending towards that point

Of sound humanity to which our Tale

Leads, though by sinuous ways, if here I shew

How Fancy, in a season when she wove

Those slender cords, to guide the unconscious Boy

For the Man's sake, could feed at Nature's call