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With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace,

I called him Brother, Englishman, and
Friend!

Yea, our blind Poet, who in his later day,
Stood almost single; uttering odious truth-
Darkness before, and danger's voice behind,
Soul awful if the earth has ever lodged
An awful soul- I seemed to see him here
Familiarly, and in his scholar's dress
Bounding before me, yet a stripling youth —
A boy, no better, with his rosy cheeks
Angelical, keen eye, courageous look,
And conscious step of purity and pride.

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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

Imagination 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;

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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.

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And upwards through late youth, until not less

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

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