Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/342

320 That their best virtues were not free from taint

Of something false and weak, that could not stand

The open eye of Reason. Then I said,

"Go to the Poets, they will speak to thee

More perfectly of purer creatures;—yet

If reason be nobility in man,

Can aught be more ignoble than the man

Whom they delight in, blinded as he is

By prejudice, the miserable slave

Of low ambition or distempered love?"

In such strange passion, if I may once more

Review the past, I warred against myself—

A bigot to a new idolatry—

Like a cowled monk who hath forsworn the world,

Zealously laboured to cut off my heart

From all the sources of her former strength;

And as, by simple waving of a wand,

The wizard instantaneously dissolves

Palace or grove, even so could I unsoul

As readily by syllogistic words

Those mysteries of being which have made,

And shall continue evermore to make,

Of the whole human race one brotherhood.