With life; yet are your hoverings on the brink
Of ruin but the freedom and the play
That binds your dance of beauty, link to link,
In woven joy that shall not fail nor shrink.
... Thrones arise and sink,
Earth is transformed beneath you: ye remain,
Clasping distracted man with Order’s sacred chain.”
So Wordsworth, addressing as it were a deified idea of Duty, pays this homage:—
... “Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,
And the most ancient heavens through Thee are fresh and strong.”