Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/71

BOOK II.] More pleasing, and whose character I deem

Is more poetic as resembling more

Creative agency. The song would speak

Of that interminable building reared

By observation of affinities

In objects where no brotherhood exists

To passive minds. My seventeenth year was come;

And, whether from this habit rooted now

So deeply in my mind, or from excess

In the great social principle of life

Coercing all things into sympathy,

To unorganic natures were transferred

My own enjoyments; or the power of truth

Coming in revelation, did converse

With things that really are; I, at this time,

Saw blessings spread around me like a sea.

Thus while the days flew by, and years passed on,

From Nature and her overflowing soul,

I had received so much, that all my thoughts

Were steeped in feeling; I was only then

Contented, when with bliss ineffable

I felt the sentiment of Being spread

O'er all that moves and all that seemeth still;

O'er all that, lost beyond the reach of thought

And human knowledge, to the human eye