That pauses of deep silence mocked his skill,

Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung

Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise

Has carried far into his heart the voice

Of mountain torrents; or the visible

Scene

Would enter unawares into his mind With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received

Into the bosom of the steady lake. WORDSWORTH.

THE EARTH-SPIRIT.

I HAVE Woven shrouds of air
In a loom of hurrying light,
For the trees which blossoms
bear,

And gilded them with sheets of
bright;

I fall upon the grass like love's first kiss;

I make the golden flies and their fine bliss;

I paint the hedgerows in the lane, And clover white and red the pathways bear;

I laugh aloud in sudden gusts of rain

To see the ocean lash himself in air;

I throw smooth shells and weeds along the beach,

And pour the curling waves far o'er the glossy reach;

Swing birds' nests in the elms, and shake cool moss

Along the aged beams, and hide their loss.

The very broad rough stones I gladden too;

Some willing seeds I drop along their sides,

Nourish the generous plant with freshening dew,

Till there where all was waste, true joy abides.

The peaks of aged mountains, with

WITHIN the mind strong fancies work,

A deep delight the bosom thrills,
Oft as I pass along the fork
Of these fraternal hills,

Where, save the rugged road, we find

No appanage of human kind,
Nor hint of man; if stone or rock
Seem not his handiwork to mock
By something cognizably shaped;
Mockery, or model roughly hewn,
And left as if by earthquake strewn,
Or from the flood escaped:
Altars for Druid service fit;
(But where no fire was ever lit,
Unless the glow-worm to the skies
Thence offer nightly sacrifice,)
Wrinkled Egyptian monument;
Green moss-grown tower; or hoary
tent;

Tents of a camp that never shall be raised

On which four thousand years have gazed!

List to those shriller notes! that march

Perchance was on the blast,
When, through this height's inverted
arch,

Rome's earliest legion passed!
They saw, adventurously impelled,
And older eyes than theirs beheld,
This block, and yon, whose church-

roar:

I love not man the less, but nature

more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean, roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain:

Man marks the earth with ruin: his control

Stops with the shore: upon the watery plain

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay; And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood,

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? Alas! they all are in their graves:

the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie;

but the cold November rain

Calls not, from out the gloomy

earth, the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago; And the brier-rose and the orchis

died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade, and glen.

And now when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more. And then I think of one who in her

youthful beauty died, The fair, meek blossom that grew up, and faded by my side: In the cold moist earth we laid her when the forest cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;

With footing worne, and leading inward far:

Faire harbour that them seems; so in they entred are.

And forth they passe, with pleasure forward led,

Joying to heare the birdes' sweete harmony,

Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred,

Seemed in their song to scorne the cruell sky.

Much can they praise the trees so straight and high,

The sayling pine; the cedar proud and tall;

The vine-propp elme; the poplar never dry;

The builder oake, sole king of forrests all;

The aspine good for staves; the cypresse funerall;

The laurell meed of mightie conquerours

And poets sage; the fir that weepeth still;

The willow, worne of forlorne paramours;

The yew, obedient to the bender's

will;

Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched

To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea,

And drew their sounding bows at Azincour;

Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.

Of vast circumference and gloom profound

This solitary Tree! a living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent

To be destroyed. But worthier still of note

Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,

Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;

Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth

Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;

Nor uninformed with fantasy, and looks

That threaten the profane; a pillared shade,

Upon whose grassless floor of redbrown hue,

By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged

Perennially; beneath whose sable roof

Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked

With

rejoicing berries, ghostly

shapes

May meet at noontide; Fear, and trembling Hope,

Silence, and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,

And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate,

As in a natural temple scattered o'er

With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,

United worship; or in mute re

pose

To lie, and listen to the mountain flood

Murmuring from Glaramara's in

most caves.

WORDSWORTH.