Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/386

364 When every day brought with it some new sense

Of exquisite regard for common things,

And all the earth was budding with these gifts

Of more refined humanity, thy breath,

Dear Sister! was a kind of gentler spring

That went before my steps. Thereafter came

One whom with thee friendship had early paired;

She came, no more a phantom to adorn

A moment, but an inmate of the heart,

And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined

To penetrate the lofty and the low;

Even as one essence of pervading light

Shines, in the brightest of ten thousand stars,

And, the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp

Couched in the dewy grass.

With such a theme,

Coleridge! with this my argument, of thee

Shall I be silent? O capacious Soul!

Placed on this earth to love and understand,

And from thy presence shed the light of love,

Shall I be mute, ere thou be spoken of?

Thy kindred influence to my heart of hearts

Did also find its way. Thus fear relaxed

Her overweening grasp; thus thoughts and things

In the self-haunting spirit learned to take