Alas! What Boots The Long Laborious Quest

Composed 1809.--Published 1809[A]

Alas! what boots the long laborious quest Of moral prudence, sought through good and ill; Or pains abstruse--to elevate the will, And lead us on to that transcendent rest Where every passion shall the sway attest Of Reason, seated on her sovereign hill; What is it but a vain and curious skill, If sapient Germany must lie deprest, Beneath the brutal sword?--Her haughty Schools Shall blush; and may not we with sorrow say, A few strong instincts and a few plain rules, Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought More for mankind at this unhappy day Than all the pride of intellect and thought?

See the paper by Alois Brandl appended to this series of sonnets, p. 218. Wordsworth had probably no means of knowing anything of Fichte's "Addresses to the German Nation," delivered weekly in Berlin, from December 1807 to March 1808. (See Fichte, by Professor Adamson, pp. 84-91.)--ED.

VARIANTS:

1815.

... pain ... 1809.

1815.

Or ... 1809.