Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/82

60 I looked for universal things; perused

The common countenance of earth and sky:

Earth, nowhere unembellished by some trace

Of that first Paradise whence man was driven;

And sky, whose beauty and bounty are expressed

By the proud name she bears—the name of Heaven.

I called on both to teach me what they might;

Or turning the mind in upon herself

Pored, watched, expected, listened, spread my thoughts

And spread them with a wider creeping; felt

Incumbencies more awful, visitings

Of the Upholder of the tranquil soul,

That tolerates the indignities of Time,

And, from the centre of Eternity

All finite motions overruling, lives

In glory immutable. But peace! enough

Here to record that I was mounting now

To such community with highest truth—

A track pursuing, not untrod before,

From strict analogies by thought supplied

Or consciousnesses not to be subdued.

To every natural form, rock, fruit or flower,

Even the loose stones that cover the high-way,

I gave a moral life: I saw them feel,

Or linked them to some feeling: the great mass