Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/273

BOOK IX.] Yet still a stranger and beloved as such;

Even by these passing spectacles my heart

Was oftentimes uplifted, and they seemed

Arguments sent from Heaven to prove the cause

Good, pure, which no one could stand up against,

Who was not lost, abandoned, selfish, proud,

Mean, miserable, wilfully depraved,

Hater perverse of equity and truth.

Among that band of Officers was one,

Already hinted at of other mould—

A patriot, thence rejected by the rest,

And with an oriental loathing spurned,

As of a different caste. A meeker man

Than this lived never, nor a more benign,

Meek though enthusiastic. Injuries

Made him more gracious, and his nature then

Did breathe its sweetness out most sensibly,

As aromatic flowers on Alpine turf,

When foot hath crushed them. He through the events

Of that great change wandered in perfect faith,

As through a book, an old romance, or tale

Of Fairy, or some dream of actions wrought

Behind the summer clouds. By birth he ranked

With the most noble, but unto the poor