Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/297

BOOK X.] Enjoining, as may best promote the aims

Of truth and justice, either sacrifice,

From whatsoever region of our cares

Or our infirm affections Nature pleads,

Earnest and blind, against the stern decree.

On the other side, I called to mind those truths

That are the common-places of the schools—

(A theme for boys, too hackneyed for their sires,)

Yet, with a revelation's liveliness,

In all their comprehensive bearings known

And visible to philosophers of old,

Men who, to business of the world untrained,

Lived in the shade; and to Harmodius known

And his compeer Aristogiton, known

To Brutus—that tyrannic power is weak,

Hath neither gratitude, nor faith, nor love,

Nor the support of good or evil men

To trust in; that the godhead which is ours

Can never utterly be charmed or stilled;

That nothing hath a natural right to last

But equity and reason; that all else

Meets foes irreconcilable, and at best

Lives only by variety of disease.