It must be admitted, however, that “The Prelude,” with all its merits, does not add to the author’s great fame, however much it may add to our knowledge of his inner life. As a poem it cannot be placed by the side of The White Doe, or The Excursion, or the Ode on Childhood, or the Ode on the Power of Sound; and the reason is to be found in its strictly didactic and personal character, necessitating a more constant use of analysis and reflection, and a greater substitution of the metaphysical for the poetic process, than poetry is willing to admit. Though intended as an introduction to “The Excursion,” it has not its sustained richness of diction and imagery; and there is little of that easy yielding of the mind to the inspiration of objects, and that ecstatic utterance of the emotions they excite, which characterize passages selected at random from the latter poem—as in that grand rushing forth of poetic impulse, in the Fourth Book: Oh! what a joy it were in vigorous health, To have a body (this our vital frame With shrinking sensibility endued, And all the nice regards of flesh and blood,) And to the elements surrender it As if it were a spirit! How divine, The liberty, for frail, for mortal man To roam at large among unpeopled glens And mountainous retirements, only trod By devious footsteps; regions consecrate To oldest time! and, reckless of the storm That keeps the raven quiet in her nest, Be as a presence or a motion—one Among the many there; and while the mists Flying, and rainy vapors, call out shapes And phantoms from the crags and solid earth As fast as a musician scatters sounds Out of an instrument; and while the streams (As at a first creation, and in haste To exercise their untried faculties) Descending from the region of the clouds, And starting from the hollows of the earth More multitudinous every moment, rend Their way before them—what a joy to roam An equal among mightiest energies; And haply sometimes with articulate voice, Amid the deafening tumult, scarcely heard By him that utters it, exclaim aloud, “Be this continued so from day to day, Nor let the fierce commotion have an end. Ruinous though it be, from month to month.” “The Prelude” has many fine descriptions of nature, but nothing which rises to the beauty and sublimity of the following passage from “The Excursion”: