Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/345

BOOK XII.] And makes them all, and the objects with which all

Are conversant, subservient in their turn

To the great ends of Liberty and Power.

But leave we this: enough that my delights

(Such as they were) were sought insatiably.

Vivid the transport, vivid though not profound;

I roamed from hill to hill, from rock to rock,

Still craving combinations of new forms,

New pleasure, wider empire for the sight,

Proud of her own endowments, and rejoiced

To lay the inner faculties asleep.

Amid the turns and counterturns, the strife

And various trials of our complex being,

As we grow up, such thraldom of that sense

Seems hard to shun. And yet I knew a maid,

A young enthusiast, who escaped these bonds;

Her eye was not the mistress of her heart;

Far less did rules prescribed by passive taste,

Or barren intermeddling subtleties,

Perplex her mind; but, wise as women are

When genial circumstance hath favoured them,

She welcomed what was given, and craved no more;

Whate'er the scene presented to her view,

That was the best, to that she was attuned

By her benign simplicity of life,