Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/381

BOOK XIV.] And backward wanderings along thorny ways:

Yet—compassed round by mountain solitudes,

Within whose solemn temple I received

My earliest visitations, careless then

Of what was given me; and which now I range,

A meditative, oft a suffering man—

Do I declare—in accents which, from truth

Deriving cheerful confidence, shall blend

Their modulation with these vocal streams—

That, whatsoever falls my better mind,

Revolving with the accidents of life,

May have sustained, that, howsoe'er misled,

Never did I, in quest of right and wrong,

Tamper with conscience from a private aim;

Nor was in any public hope the dupe

Of selfish passions; nor did ever yield

Wilfully to mean cares or low pursuits,

But shrunk with apprehensive jealousy

From every combination which might aid

The tendency, too potent in itself,

Of use and custom to bow down the soul

Under a growing weight of vulgar sense,

And substitute a universe of death

For that which moves with light and life informed,

Actual, divine, and true. To fear and love,