Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/65

BOOK II.] Our Being's earthly progress,) blest the Babe,

Nursed in his Mother's arms, who sinks to sleep

Rocked on his Mother's breast; who with his soul

Drinks in the feelings of his Mother's eye!

For him, in one dear Presence, there exists

A virtue which irradiates and exalts

Objects through widest intercourse of sense.

No outcast he, bewildered and depressed:

Along his infant veins are interfused

The gravitation and the filial bond

Of nature that connect him with the world.

Is there a flower, to which he points with hand

Too weak to gather it, already love

Drawn from love's purest earthly fount for him

Hath beautified that flower; already shades

Of pity cast from inward tenderness

Do fall around him upon aught that bears

Unsightly marks of violence or harm.

Emphatically such a Being lives,

Frail creature as he is, helpless as frail,

An inmate of this active universe.

For feeling has to him imparted power

That through the growing faculties of sense

Doth like an agent of the one great Mind

Create, creator and receiver both,