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”:

—when a step,

A single step, that freed me from the skirts

Of the blind vapor, opened to my view

Glory beyond all glory ever seen

By waking sense or by the dreaming soul!

The appearance, instantaneously disclosed

Was of a mighty city—boldly say

A wilderness of building, sinking far