Theirs is the language of the heavens, the power,
  The thought, the image, and the silent joy: 
  Words are but under-agents in their souls;
  When they are grasping with their greatest strength,
  They do not breathe among them:  this I speak 275
  In gratitude to God, Who feeds our hearts
  For His own service; knoweth, loveth us,
  When we are unregarded by the world.

    Also, about this time did I receive
  Convictions still more strong than heretofore, 280
  Not only that the inner frame is good,
  And graciously composed, but that, no less,
  Nature for all conditions wants not power
  To consecrate, if we have eyes to see,
  The outside of her creatures, and to breathe 285
  Grandeur upon the very humblest face
  Of human life.  I felt that the array
  Of act and circumstance, and visible form,
  Is mainly to the pleasure of the mind
  What passion makes them; that meanwhile the forms 290
  Of Nature have a passion in themselves,
  That intermingles with those works of man
  To which she summons him; although the works
  Be mean, have nothing lofty of their own;
  And that the Genius of the Poet hence 295
  May boldly take his way among mankind
  Wherever Nature leads; that he hath stood
  By Nature’s side among the men of old,
  And so shall stand for ever.  Dearest Friend! 
  If thou partake the animating faith 300
  That Poets, even as Prophets, each with each
  Connected in a mighty scheme of truth,
  Have each his own peculiar faculty,
  Heaven’s gift, a sense that fits him to perceive
  Objects unseen before, thou wilt not blame 305
  The humblest of this band who dares to hope
  That unto him hath also been vouchsafed
  An insight that in some sort he possesses,
  A privilege whereby a work of his,
  Proceeding from a source of untaught things, 310
  Creative and enduring, may become
  A power like one of Nature’s.  To a hope
  Not less ambitious once among the wilds
  Of Sarum’s Plain, [E] my youthful spirit was raised;
  There, as I ranged at will the pastoral downs 315
  Trackless and smooth, or paced the bare white roads
  Lengthening in solitude their dreary line,
  Time with his retinue of ages fled
  Backwards, nor checked his flight until I saw
  Our dim ancestral Past in vision clear; 320
  Saw multitudes of men, and, here and there,
  A single Briton clothed in wolf-skin vest,
  With shield and stone-axe, stride across the wold;
  The voice of spears was heard, the rattling spear
  Shaken by arms of mighty bone, in strength, 325
  Long mouldered, of barbaric majesty.