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 Hast placed me high above my best deserts, BOOK IV [Lines 256-338] 320 As one who hangs down-bending from the side Of a slow-moving boat, upon the breast With such discoveries as his eye can make 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 Conspicuous invitation to ascend 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; end. 640 Than two-and-twenty summers had been told Was Man in my affections and regards 350 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 The light of beauty did not fall in vain, 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, 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 |