Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/300

278 My sorrow; for I brought with me the faith

That, if France prospered, good men would not long

Pay fruitless worship to humanity,

And this most rotten branch of human shame,

Object, so seemed it, of superfluous pains,

Would fall together with its parent tree.

What, then, were my emotions, when in arms

Britain put forth her free-born strength in league,

Oh, pity and shame! with those confederate Powers!

Not in my single self alone I found,

But in the minds of all ingenuous youth,

Change and subversion from that hour. No shock

Given to my moral nature had I known

Down to that very moment; neither lapse

Nor turn of sentiment that might be named

A revolution, save at this one time;

All else was progress on the self-same path

On which, with a diversity of pace,

I had been travelling: this a stride at once

Into another region. As a light

And pliant harebell, swinging in the breeze

On some grey rock—its birth-place—so had I

Wantoned, fast rooted on the ancient tower

Of my beloved country, wishing not

A happier fortune than to wither there: