SOUND AND MOTION

Ascending; they approach-I hear their

wings,

Faint, faint at first; and then at eager sound,
Past in a moment-and as faint again!
They tempt the sun to sport amid their
plumes;

They tempt the water, or the gleaming ice,
To show them a fair image; 'tis themselves,
Their own fair forms, upon the glimmering
plain,

Painted more soft and fair as they descend
Almost to touch; then up again aloft,
Up, with a sally and a flash of speed,

As if they scorned both resting-place and rest !"

Wordsworth was never

"to the moods

Of time and season, to the moral power,
The affections and the spirit of the place
Insensible."

Though rejoicing always before the winds and roaring waters and in the lights and ** shades that march and countermarch about the hills in glorious apparition, he was most

IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY

responsive to the quieting influences of nature, he felt most deeply the stillness and calm of evening and early morning. We know this when e read that incomparable sonnet, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge,” and the lovely sonnet beginning, "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free." Passages of great beauty (the beauty of truthfulness—the truthfulness of one who not only sees but feels) might be called from the many poems which describe the sober hour, its hush, its repose, its deepening darkness. The finest of these evening voluntaries is the ode "Composed upon an Evening of Extraordinary Splendor and Beauty." No lover of poetry can read this ode without emotion and an uplift of the spirit, without a vision of those fair countries to which we are bound.

Wordsworth, as we have said, sensitive always to the moods of time and place, felt what power there is in sound, heard at a quiet. hour and in a lonely place, to deepen the sense of calm and solitude. Note his description, near the close of the fourth book of "The

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X

SOUND AND MOTION

Excursion" of the raven's cry, heard at the hour when issue forth the first pale stars: "The solitary raven, flying,

Athwart the concave of the dark blue dome, Unseen, perchance above all power of sight. See also, in the same book of "The Excursion" what the poet says of

-"that single cry, the unanswered bleat Of a poor lamb-left somewhere.to itself, The plaintive spirit of the solitude."

A stanza in the poem entitled "Fidelity," the stanza which describes the loneliness and remoteness of that cove far in the bosom of Helvellyn, affords another example of the power of sound to deepen the impression of stillness and solitude:

"There sometimes does a leaping fish
Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
The crags repeat the raven's crook,
In symphony austere;

Thither the rainbow comes-the cloud—
And mists that spread the flying shroud;
And sunbeams; and the sounding blast,
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That, if it could, would hurry past;
But that enormous barrier holds it fast."

Somewhere in his poetry, Wordsworth speaks of the shadow of an object as that object's echo. Another instance of this tendency to transfer the function from the sense of seeing to the sense of hearing is found in the little poem, "Airey-place Valley." The swaying motion of the light ash-a tree sensitive to the gentle touch of the breeze-is described as a “soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs.' In the second book of "The Excursion" there is still another example. The Solitary has been telling of the part that two huge Peaks play in the wild concert which the wind, in his tuneful course, draws forth from rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and crashing shores. "Nor have nature's laws," he adds,

"Left them ungifted with a power to yield Music of finer tone; a harmony,

So do I call it, though it be the hand

Of silence, though there be no voice;-the

clouds,

The mists, the shadows, light of golden suns,

SOUND AND MOTION

Motions of moonlight, all come hithertouch,

And have an answer-thither come, and shape A language not unwelcome to sick hearts And idle spirits."

That Wordsworth, himself so alive to the beauty of sound, comprehended the loneliness of one who lives in utter silence, the following passage from "The Excursion" proves:

"He grew up

From year to year in loneliness of soul;
And this deep mountain-valley was to him
Soundless, with all its streams. The bird of
dawn

Did never rouse this Cottager from sleep
With startling summons, nor for his delight
The vernal cuckoo shouted; not for him
Murmured the labouring bee. When stormy
winds

Were working the broad bosom of the lake Into a thousand, thousand sparkling waves, Rolking the trees, or driving cloud on cloud Along the sharp edge of yon lofty crags,