Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/351

BOOK XII.] Substance and life to what I feel, enshrining,

Such is my hope, the spirit of the Past

For future restoration.—Yet another

Of these memorials:—

One Christmas-time,

On the glad eve of its dear holidays,

Feverish, and tired, and restless, I went forth

Into the fields, impatient for the sight

Of those led palfreys that should bear us home;

My brothers and myself. There rose a crag,

That, from the meeting-point of two highways

Ascending, overlooked them both, far stretched;

Thither, uncertain on which road to fix

My expectation, thither I repaired,

Scout-like, and gained the summit; 'twas a day

Tempestuous, dark, and wild, and on the grass

I sate half-sheltered by a naked wall;

Upon my right hand couched a single sheep,

Upon my left a blasted hawthorn stood;

With those companions at my side, I watched,

Straining my eyes intensely, as the mist

Gave intermitting prospect of the copse

And plain beneath. Ere we to school returned,—

That dreary time,—ere we had been ten days