His truer instinct sought the life that speaks
Without a mystery from kindly eyes;
In no self-spun cocoon of prudence wound,
He by the touch of men was best inspired,
And caught his native greatness at rebound
From generosities itself had fired;
Then how the heat through every fibre ran,
Felt in the gathering presence of the man,
While the apt word and gesture came unbid! 150
Virtues and faults it to one metal wrought,
    Fined all his blood to thought,
And ran the molten man in all he said or did. 
All Tully’s rules and all Quintilian’s too
He by the light of listening faces knew,
And his rapt audience all unconscious lent
Their own roused force to make him eloquent;
Persuasion fondled in his look and tone;
Our speech (with strangers prudish) he could bring
To find new charm in accents not her own; 160
Her coy constraints and icy hindrances
Melted upon his lips to natural ease,
As a brook’s fetters swell the dance of spring. 
Nor yet all sweetness:  not in vain he wore,
Nor in the sheath of ceremony, controlled
By velvet courtesy or caution cold,
That sword of honest anger prized of old,
        But, with two-handed wrath,
If baseness or pretension crossed his path,
    Struck once nor needed to strike more. 170

2.

His magic was not far to seek.—­
He was so human!  Whether strong or weak,
Far from his kind he neither sank nor soared,
But sate an equal guest at every board: 
No beggar ever felt him condescend,
No prince presume; for still himself he bare
At manhood’s simple level, and where’er
He met a stranger, there he left a friend. 
How large an aspect! nobly un-severe,
With freshness round him of Olympian cheer, 180
Like visits of those earthly gods he came;
His look, wherever its good-fortune fell,
Doubled the feast without a miracle,
And on the hearthstone danced a happier flame;
Philemon’s crabbed vintage grew benign;
Amphitryon’s gold-juice humanized to wine.

III

1.

      The garrulous memories
Gather again from all their far-flown nooks, Singly at first, and then by twos and threes, Then in a throng innumerable, as the rooks 190
      Thicken their twilight files
Tow’rd Tintern’s gray repose of roofless aisles:  Once more I see him at the table’s head When Saturday her monthly banquet spread
      To scholars, poets, wits,
All choice, some famous, loving things, not names, And so without a twinge at others’ fames; Such company as wisest moods befits,
Yet with no pedant blindness to the worth
     Of undeliberate mirth, 200

Natures benignly mixed of air and earth,
Now with the stars and now with equal zest
Tracing the eccentric orbit of a jest.

2.