Of peaceful houses with unquiet sounds. 165
  The soil of common life, was, at that time,
  Too hot to tread upon.  Oft said I then,
  And not then only, “What a mockery this
  Of history, the past and that to come! 
  Now do I feel how all men are deceived, 170
  Reading of nations and their works, in faith,
  Faith given to vanity and emptiness;
  Oh! laughter for the page that would reflect
  To future times the face of what now is!”
  The land all swarmed with passion, like a plain 175
  Devoured by locusts,—­Carra, Gorsas,—­add
  A hundred other names, forgotten now, [K]
  Nor to be heard of more; yet, they were powers,
  Like earthquakes, shocks repeated day by day,
  And felt through every nook of town and field. 180

Such was the state of things.  Meanwhile the chief
Of my associates stood prepared for flight
To augment the band of emigrants in arms [L]
Upon the borders of the Rhine, and leagued
With foreign foes mustered for instant war. 185
This was their undisguised intent, and they
Were waiting with the whole of their desires
The moment to depart. 
An Englishman,
Born in a land whose very name appeared
To license some unruliness of mind; 190
A stranger, with youth’s further privilege,
And the indulgence that a half-learnt speech
Wins from the courteous; I, who had been else
Shunned and not tolerated, freely lived
With these defenders of the Crown, and talked, 195
And heard their notions; nor did they disdain
The wish to bring me over to their cause.

    But though untaught by thinking or by books
  To reason well of polity or law,
  And nice distinctions, then on every tongue, 200
  Of natural rights and civil; and to acts
  Of nations and their passing interests,
  (If with unworldly ends and aims compared)
  Almost indifferent, even the historian’s tale
  Prizing but little otherwise than I prized 205
  Tales of the poets, as it made the heart
  Beat high, and filled the fancy with fair forms,
  Old heroes and their sufferings and their deeds;
  Yet in the regal sceptre, and the pomp
  Of orders and degrees, I nothing found 210
  Then, or had ever, even in crudest youth,
  That dazzled me, but rather what I mourned
  And ill could brook, beholding that the best
  Ruled not, and feeling that they ought to rule.

    For, born in a poor district, and which yet 215
  Retaineth more of ancient homeliness,
  Than any other nook of English ground,
  It was my fortune scarcely to have seen,
  Through the whole tenor of my school-day time,
  The face of one, who, whether boy or man,