Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/249

BOOK VIII.] When everywhere a vital pulse was felt,

And all the several frames of things, like stars,

Through every magnitude distinguishable,

Shone mutually indebted, or half lost

Each in the other's blaze, a galaxy

Of life and glory. In the midst stood Man,

Outwardly, inwardly contemplated,

As, of all visible natures, crown, though born

Of dust, and kindred to the worm; a Being,

Both in perception and discernment, first

In every capability of rapture,

Through the divine effect of power and love;

As, more than anything we know, instinct

With godhead, and, by reason and by will,

Acknowledging dependency sublime.

Ere long, the lonely mountains left, I moved,

Begirt, from day to day, with temporal shapes

Of vice and folly thrust upon my view,

Objects of sport, and ridicule, and scorn,

Manners and characters discriminate,

And little bustling passions that eclipse,

As well they might, the impersonated thought,

The idea, or abstraction of the kind.