And yet more gladly thee would I conduct Through woods and spacious forests,--to behold There, how the Original of human art, 35 Heaven-prompted Nature, measures and erects Her temples, fearless for the stately work, Though waves, to every breeze,[211] its high-arched roof, And storms the pillars rock. But we such schools Of reverential awe will chiefly seek 40 In the still summer noon, while beams of light, Reposing here, and in the aisles beyond Traceably gliding through the dusk, recal To mind the living presences of nuns; A gentle, pensive, white-robed sisterhood, 45 Whose saintly radiance mitigates the gloom Of those terrestrial fabrics, where they serve, To Christ, the Sun of righteousness, espoused. Now also shall the page of classic lore, To these glad eyes from bondage freed, again 50 Lie open; and the book of Holy Writ, Again unfolded, passage clear shall yield To heights more glorious still, and into shades More awful, where, advancing hand in hand, We may be taught, O Darling of my care! 55 To calm the affections, elevate the soul, And consecrate our lives to truth and love.[212] VARIANTS: [Footnote 209: 1850. --O my Antigone, beloved child! 1820. ] [Footnote 210: 1837. ... torrent ... 1827. ] [Footnote 211: 1837. Though waves in every breeze ... 1820. ] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote CC: Compare Tennyson, _In Memoriam_, stanza xix.-- There twice a day the Severn fills; The salt sea-water passes by, And hushes half the babbling Wye, And makes a silence in the hills. ED. ] [Footnote CD: The opening lines of Milton's _Samson Agonistes_. Compare also _The Wanderings of Cain_ (canto ii. l. 1), by S. T. Coleridge: "A little farther, O my father, yet a little farther, and we shall come into the open moonlight." ... "Lead on, my child!" said Cain; "guide me, little child!"--ED.] [Footnote CE: Dora Wordsworth died in 1847, a loss which cast a gloom over her father's remaining years; and it is not without interest that in the last revision of the text of his poems, in the year of his own death, he substituted O my own Dora, my belovèd child! for the earlier reading, O my Antigone, beloved child! ED. ] [Footnote CF: Compare in the lines on Lucy, beginning, "Three years she grew in sun and shower" (vol. ii. p. 81)-- She shall be sportive as the fawn That wild with glee across the lawn Or up the mountain springs. ED. ] [Footnote CG: Compare _Paradise Lost_, book ii. l. 409.--ED.] TO ----, ON HER FIRST ASCENT TO THE SUMMIT OF HELVELLYN Composed 1816.--Published 1820.