d. ll. 206
_et seqq._]

This subject is treated at length in the Ode 'Intimations of
Immortality.'

519. _Samuel Daniel and Countess of Cumberland_. ['Excursion,' _ibid._
l. 326.]

'Knowing the heart of Man is set to be,' &c.

The passage quoted from Daniel is taken from a poem addressed to the
Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, and the two last lines, printed
in Italics, are by him translated from Seneca. The whole Poem is very
beautiful. I will transcribe four stanzas from it, as they contain an
admirable picture of the state of a wise Man's mind in a time of public
commotion.

Nor is he moved with all the thunder-cracks
Of tyrants' threats, or with the surly brow
Of Power, that proudly sits on other's crimes;
Charged with more crying sins than those he checks.
The storms of sad confusion that may grow
Up in the present for the coming times,
Appal not him; that hath no side at all,
But of himself, and knows the worst can fall.

Although his heart (so near allied to earth)
Cannot but pity the perplexed state
Of troublous and distressed mortality,
That thus make way unto the ugly birth
Of their own sorrows, and do still beget
Affliction upon Imbecility;
Yet seeing thus the course of things must run,
He looks thereon not strange, but as foredone.

And whilst distraught ambition compasses,
And is encompassed, while as craft deceives,
And is deceived: whilst man doth ransack man,
And builds on blood, and rises by distress;
And th' Inheritance of desolation leaves
To great-expecting hopes: He looks thereon,
As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,
And bears no venture in Impiety.

Thus, Lady, fares that man that hath prepared
A rest for his desire; and sees all things
Beneath him; and hath learned this book of man,
Full of the notes of frailty; and compared
The best of glory with her sufferings:
By whom, I see, you labour all you can
To plant your heart! and set your thoughts as near
His glorious mansion as your powers can bear.'

520. _Spires_.

And spires whose "silent finger points to Heaven."' ['Excursion,'
Book vi. l. 19.]

An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches in flat
countries with spire-steeples, which as they cannot be referred to any
other object, point as with silent finger to the sky and stars, and
sometimes, when th