Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/68

46 Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are

The ghostly language of the ancient earth,

Or make their dim abode in distant winds.

Thence did I drink the visionary power;

And deem not profitless those fleeting moods

Of shadowy exultation: not for this,

That they are kindred to our purer mind

And intellectual life; but that the soul,

Remembering how she felt, but what she felt

Remembering not, retains an obscure sense

Of possible sublimity, whereto

With growing faculties she doth aspire,

With faculties still growing, feeling still

That whatsoever point they gain, they yet

Have something to pursue.

And not alone,

'Mid gloom and tumult, but no less 'mid fair

And tranquil scenes, that universal power

And fitness in the latent qualities

And essences of things, by which the mind

Is moved with feelings of delight, to me

Came, strengthened with a superadded soul,

A virtue not its own. My morning walks

Were early;—oft before the hours of school

I travelled round our little lake, five miles