Compare Wordsworth’s Excursion, “Despondency Corrected,” p. 120:— “‘Tis a thing impossible to frame Conceptions equal to the soul’s desires, And the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain. Man is of dust; ethereal hopes are his, Which, when they should sustain themselves aloft, Want due consistence; like a pillar of smoke That with majestic energy from earth Rises, but having reach’d the thinner air Melts and dissolves, and is no longer seen.” Compare also p. 122:— “Alas! the endowment of immortal power Is match’d unequally with custom, time, And domineering faculties of sense In all…in most with superadded foes,” etc.