Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/343

BOOK XII.] What wonder, then, if, to a mind so far

Perverted, even the visible Universe

Fell under the dominion of a taste

Less spiritual, with microscopic view

Was scanned, as I had scanned the moral world?

O Soul of Nature! excellent and fair!

That didst rejoice with me, with whom I, too,

Rejoiced through early youth, before the winds

And roaring waters, and in lights and shades

That marched and countermarched about the hills

In glorious apparition, Powers on whom

I daily waited, now all eye and now

All ear; but never long without the heart

Employed, and man's unfolding intellect:

O Soul of Nature! that, by laws divine

Sustained and governed, still dost overflow

With an impassioned life, what feeble ones

Walk on this earth! how feeble have I been

When thou wert in thy strength! Nor this through stroke

Of human suffering, such as justifies

Remissness and inaptitude of mind,

But through presumption; even in pleasure pleased

Unworthily, disliking here, and there

Liking; by rules of mimic art transferred