Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/271

BOOK IX.] And wealth and titles were in less esteem

Than talents, worth, and prosperous industry.

Add unto this, subservience from the first

To presences of God's mysterious power

Made manifest in Nature's sovereignty,

And fellowship with venerable books,

To sanction the proud workings of the soul,

And mountain liberty. It could not be

But that one tutored thus should look with awe

Upon the faculties of man, receive

Gladly the highest promises, and hail,

As best, the government of equal rights

And individual worth. And hence, O Friend!

If at the first great outbreak I rejoiced

Less than might well befit my youth, the cause

In part lay here, that unto me the events

Seemed nothing out of nature's certain course,

A gift that was come rather late than soon.

No wonder, then, if advocates like these,

Inflamed by passion, blind with prejudice,

And stung with injury, at this riper day,

Were impotent to make my hopes put on

The shape of theirs, my understanding bend

In honour to their honour: zeal, which yet

Had slumbered, now in opposition burst