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Francis T. Palgrave, ed. (1824–1897). The Golden Treasury. 1875.

William Wordsworth

CCLXXIX. Within King’s College Chapel, Cambridge

TAX not the royal Saint with vain expense,

With ill-match’d aims the Architect who plann’d

(Albeit labouring for a scanty band

Of white-robed scholars only) this immense

And glorious work of fine intelligence!—

Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore

Of nicely-calculated less or more:—

So deem’d the man who fashion’d for the sense

These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof

Self-poised, and scoop’d into ten thousand cells

Where light and shade repose, where music dwells

Lingering—and wandering on as loth to die;

Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof

That they were born for immortality.