Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/282

260 And on these spots with many gleams I looked

Of chivalrous delight. Yet not the less,

Hatred of absolute rule, where will of one

Is law for all, and of that barren pride

In them who, by immunities unjust,

Between the sovereign and the people stand,

His helper and not theirs, laid stronger hold

Daily upon me, mixed with pity too

And love; for where hope is, there love will be

For the abject multitude. And when we chanced

One day to meet a hunger-bitten girl,

Who crept along fitting her languid gait

Unto a heifer's motion, by a cord

Tied to her arm, and picking thus from the lane

Its sustenance, while the girl with pallid hands

Was busy knitting in a heartless mood

Of solitude, and at the sight my friend

In agitation said, "'Tis against that

That we are fighting," I with him believed

That a benignant spirit was abroad

Which might not be withstood, that poverty

Abject as this would in a little time

Be found no more, that we should see the earth

Unthwarted in her wish to recompense

The meek, the lowly, patient child of toil,