Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/90

68 And gratitude grew dizzy in a brain

Never excited by the fumes of wine

Before that hour, or since. Then, forth I ran

From the assembly; through a length of streets,

Ran, ostrich-like, to reach our chapel door

In not a desperate or opprobrious time,

Albeit long after the importunate bell

Had stopped, with wearisome Cassandra voice

No longer haunting the dark winter night.

Call back, O Friend! a moment to thy mind

The place itself and fashion of the rites.

With careless ostentation shouldering up

My surplice, through the inferior throng I clove

Of the plain Burghers, who in audience stood

On the last skirts of their permitted ground,

Under the pealing organ. Empty thoughts!

I am ashamed of them: and that great Bard,

And thou, O Friend! who in thy ample mind

Hast placed me high above my best deserts,

Ye will forgive the weakness of that hour,

In some of its unworthy vanities,

Brother to many more.

In this mixed sort

The months passed on, remissly, not given up

To wilful alienation from the right,