No longer haunting the dark winter night. Call back, O Friend!1 a moment to thy mind, The place itself and fashion of the rites. 310 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.

BOOK IV

[Lines 256-338]

320

As one who hangs down-bending from the side

Of a slow-moving boat, upon the breast
Of a still water, solacing himself

With such discoveries as his eye can make
Beneath him in the bottom of the deep, 260
Sees many beauteous sights-weeds, fishes,
flowers,

Grots, pebbles, roots of trees, and fancies more,

Yet often is perplexed, and cannot part The shadow from the substance, rocks and sky,

1 Coleridge, to whom The Prelude was addressed.

And feast and dance, and public revelry, And sports and games (too grateful in themselves,

Yet in themselves less grateful, I believe, Than as they were a badge glossy and fresh Of manliness and freedom) all conspired To lure my mind from firm habitual quest Of feeding pleasures, to depress the zeal And damp those yearnings which had once been mine

A wild, unworldly-minded youth, given

The only track now visible was one
That from the torrent's further brink held
forth

Conspicuous invitation to ascend
A lofty mountain.

After brief delay

Crossing the unbridged stream, that road we took,

And clomb with eagerness, till anxious fears

Intruded, for we failed to overtake

Our comrades gone before. By fortunate chance,

While every moment added doubt to doubt, A peasant met us, from whose mouth we learned

That to the spot which had perplexed us first 580 We must descend, and there should find the road,

Which in the stony channel of the stream Lay a few steps, and then along its banks; And, that our future course, all plain to sight,

Was downwards, with the current of that stream.

Loth to believe what we so grieved to hear,

For still we had hopes that pointed to the clouds,

We questioned him again, and yet again; But every word that from the peasant's

lips

Came in reply, translated by our feelings, Ended in this, that we had crossed the Alps.

591

here the Power so called Through sad incompetence of human speech, That awful Power rose from the mind's abyss

Like an unfathered vapour that enwraps, At once, some lonely traveller. I was

lost;

Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side

As if a voice were in them, the sick sight And giddy prospect of the raving stream, The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,

Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light

Were all like workings of one mind, the features

Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree;
Characters of the great Apocalypse,
The types and symbols of Eternity,
Of first, and last, and midst, and without

end.

640

Than two-and-twenty summers had been told

Was Man in my affections and regards 350
Subordinate to her, her visible forms
And viewless agencies: a passion, she,
A rapture often, and immediate love
Ever at hand; he, only a delight
Occasional, an accidental grace,

His hour being not yet come. Far less had then

The inferior creatures, beast or bird, attuned

My spirit to that gentleness of love, (Though they had long been carefully observed),

Won from me those minute obeisances 360
Of tenderness, which I may number now
With my first blessings. Nevertheless, on
these

The light of beauty did not fall in vain,
Or grandeur circumfuse them to no end.

BOOK XIV [Lines 1-129]

CONCLUSION

IN one of those excursions (may they ne'er Fade from remembrance!) through the Northern tracts

Of Cambria ranging with a youthful friend, I left Bethgelert's huts at couching-time, And westward took my way, to see the

sun

Rise, from the top of Snowdon. To the door

Of a rude cottage at the mountain's base We came, and roused the shepherd who attends

30

In that wild place and at the dead of night,
Being over and forgotten, on we wound
In silence as before. With forehead bent
Earthward, as if in opposition set
Against an enemy, I panted up
With eager pace, and no less eager thoughts.
Thus might we wear a midnight hour away,
Ascending at loose distance each from each,
And I, as chanced, the foremost of the
band;

When at my feet the ground appeared to brighten,

And with a step or two seemed brighter still;

Nor was time given to ask or learn the