Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/352

330 Sojourners in my father's house, he died,

And I and my three brothers, orphans then,

Followed his body to the grave. The event,

With all the sorrow that it brought, appeared

A chastisement; and when I called to mind

That day so lately past, when from the crag

I looked in such anxiety of hope;

With trite reflections of morality,

Yet in the deepest passion, I bowed low

To God, Who thus corrected my desires;

And, afterwards, the wind and sleety rain,

And all the business of the elements,

The single sheep, and the one blasted tree,

And the bleak music from that old stone wall,

The noise of wood and water, and the mist

That on the line of each of those two roads

Advanced in such indisputable shapes;

All these were kindred spectacles and sounds

To which I oft repaired, and thence would drink,

As at a fountain; and on winter nights,

Down to this very time, when storm and rain

Beat on my roof, or, haply, at noon-day,

While in a grove I walk, whose lofty trees,

Laden with summer's thickest foliage, rock