Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/269

BOOK IX.] Upon the borders of the Rhine, and leagued

With foreign foes mustered for instant war.

This was their undisguised intent, and they

Were waiting with the whole of their desires

The moment to depart.

An Englishman,

Born in a land whose very name appeared

To license some unruliness of mind;

A stranger, with youth's further privilege,

And the indulgence that a half-learnt speech

Wins from the courteous; I, who had been else

Shunned and not tolerated, freely lived

With these defenders of the Crown, and talked,

And heard their notions; nor did they disdain

The wish to bring me over to their cause.

But though untaught by thinking or by books

To reason well of polity or law,

And nice distinctions, then on every tongue,

Of natural rights and civil; and to acts

Of nations and their passing interests,

(If with unworldly ends and aims compared)

Almost indifferent, even the historian's tale

Prizing but little otherwise than I prized

Tales of the poets, as it made the heart