Oh! yet a few short years of useful life, 430 And all will be complete, thy race be run, Thy monument of glory will be raised; Then, though (too weak to tread the ways of truth) This age fall back to old idolatry, Though men return to servitude as fast 435 As the tide ebbs, to ignominy and shame By nations sink together, we shall still Find solace--knowing what we have learnt to know, Rich in true happiness if allowed to be Faithful alike in forwarding a day 440 Of firmer trust, joint labourers in the work (Should Providence such grace to us vouchsafe) Of their deliverance, surely yet to come. Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak A lasting inspiration, sanctified 445 By reason, blest by faith: what we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how; Instruct them how the mind of man becomes A thousand times more beautiful than the earth On which he dwells, above this frame of things 450 (Which, 'mid all revolution in the hopes And fears of men, doth still remain unchanged) In beauty exalted, as it is itself Of quality and fabric more divine. * * * * * FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT [Footnote A: With Robert Jones, in the summer of 1793.--Ed.] [Footnote B: Compare 'Paradise Lost', book i. l. 21.--Ed.] [Footnote C: Compare 'Paradise Lost', book v. l. 488.--Ed.] [Footnote D: Compare 'The Sparrow's Nest', vol. ii. p. 236.--Ed.] [Footnote E: See 'Paradise Lost', book ix. ll. 490, 491.--Ed.] [Footnote F: Mary Hutchinson. Compare the lines, p. 2, beginning: 'She was a Phantom of delight.' Ed.] [Footnote G: Compare the preface to 'The Excursion'. "Several years ago, when the author retired to his native mountains, with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary work that might live," etc.--Ed.] [Footnote H: After leaving London, he went to the Isle of Wight and to Salisbury Plain with Calvert; then to Bristol, the Valley of the Wye, and Tintern Abbey, alone on foot; thence to Jones' residence in North Wales at Plas-yn-llan in Denbighshire; with him to other places in North Wales, thence to Halifax; and with his sister to Kendal, Grasmere, Keswick, Whitehaven, and Penrith.--Ed.] [Footnote I: Raisley Calvert.-Ed.] [Footnote K: His friend, dying in January 1795, bequeathed to Wordsworth a legacy of £900. Compare the sonnet, in vol. iv., beginning 'Calvert! it must not be unheard by them,' and the 'Life of Wordsworth' in this edition.--Ed.] [Footnote L: The Wordsworths went to Alfoxden in the end of July, 1797. It was in the autumn of that year that, with Coleridge, 'Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge they roved Unchecked, or loitered 'mid her sylvan combs;'