Through the Flaming Sword

This has nothing to do with Quakerism, but I am so taken with it that I want to share it with somebody.

I’ve been reading William Wordsworth’s “Prelude,” an (extremely) long poetic autobiography, so excellent in its self-exploration and commentary on so many things. This is from Book Seventh: Residence in London, in which the young Wordsworth comes to the big city from his idyllic home in the Lake Country not far from the geographic fountainhead of Quakerism, and after finishing college at Cambridge.

My title: In our time of trial (pun intended)

Pass we from entertainments, that are such
Professedly, to others titled higher,
Yet, in the estimate of youth at least,
More near akin to those than names imply,—
I mean the brawls of lawyers in their courts
Before the ermined judge, or that great state
Where senators, tongue-favoured men, perform,
Admired and envied. Oh! the beating heart
When one among the prime of these rose up,—
One, of whose name from childhood, we had heard
Familiarly, a household term, like those,
The Bedfords, Glosters, Salsburys, of old,
Whom the fifth Harry talks of. Silence I hush!
This is no trifler, no short-flighted wit,
No stammerer of a minute, painfully
Delivered. No! the Orator hath yoked
The Hours, like young Aurora, to his ear:
Thrice welcome Presence! how can patience e’er
Grow weary of attending on a track
That kindles with such glory! All are charmed,
Astonished; like a hero in romance,
He winds away his never-ending horn;
Words follow words, sense seems to follow sense:
What memory and what logic! till the strain
Transcendent, superhuman as it seemed,
Grows tedious even in a young man’s ear.