From Wordsworth's "Excursion" - Book iv.

From Wordsworth's "Excursion" - Book iv.

Ah! let not aught amiss within dispose
A noble mind to practice on herself,
And tempt opinion to support the wrongs
Of passion: whatsoe'er be felt or feared,
From higher judgment-seats make no appeal
To lower: can you question that the soul
Inherits an allegiance, not by choice
To be cast off, upon an oath proposed
By each new upstart notion? In the ports
Of levity no refuge can be found,
No shelter, for a spirit in distress.
He who by willful disesteem of life
And proud insensibility to hope,
Affronts the eye of Solitude, shall learn
That her mild nature can be terrible;
That neither she nor silence lack the power
To avenge their own insulted majesty.

"O blest seclusion! when the mind admits

The law of duty; and can therefore move
Through each vicissitude of loss and gain,
Linked in entire complacence with her choice,
When youth's presumptuousness is mellow'd down,
And manhood's vain anxiety dismissed;
When wisdom shows her seasonable fruit,
Upon the boughs of sheltering leisure hung
In sober plenty; when the spirit stoops
To drink with gratitude the crystal stream
Of unreproved enjoyment; and is pleased
To muse, and be saluted by the air
Of meek repentance, wafting wall-flower scents
From out the crumbling ruins of fallen pride
And chambers of transgression, now forlorn.
O calm contented days, and peaceful nights!
Who, when such good can be obtained, would strive
To reconcile his manhood to a couch
Soft, as may seem, but, under that disguise,
Stuffed with the thorny substance of the past
For fixed annoyance: and full oft beset
With floating dreams, black and disconsolate,
The vaporing phantoms of futurity?

* Within the soul a faculty abides,

That with interposition, which would hide
And darken, so can deal, that they become
Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt
Her native brightness, as the ample moon,
In the deep stillness of a summer even
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove,
Burns, like an unconsuming fire of light,
In the green trees; and kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own -
Yea, with her own incorporated, by power
Capacious and serene; like power abides
In man's celestial spirit; virtue thus
Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds
A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,
From the encumbrances of mortal life,
From error, disappointment - nay, from guilt;
And sometimes, so relenting justice wills,
From palpable oppressions of despair.

See Abercrombie's "Philosophy of Moral Feelings," Page 18.
*Ditto, Page 32.

William Wordsworth

3:32, p. 5

1839.11.02