Of minster clock! From that bleak tenement He, many an evening, to his distant home In solitude returning, saw the hills Grow larger in the darkness; all alone Beheld the stars come out above his head, And travelled through the wood, with no one near So the foundations of his mind were laid, A precious gift; for, as he grew in years, -BYRON, Childe Harold, Canto IV., St. clxxxiv. -ED. With these impressions would he still compare All his remembrances, thoughts, shapes, and forms; Upon his brain; and on their pictured lines On all things which the moving seasons brought Thus informed, ⚫ Compare "those obstinate questionings Of sense, and outward things," &c. -The Ode on Immortality (Vol. IV. Appeared like something in myself, a dream, A prospect of the mind." p. 53). -The Prelude, Book II. (Vol. III. p. 167).-ED. By which she is made quick to recognise Of persecution, and the Covenant-times Strange and uncouth; dire faces, figures dire, With long and ghostly shanks-forms which once seen Could never be forgotten! In his heart, Where Fear sate thus, a cherished visitant, With every form of creature as it looked Towards the Uncreated, with a countenance Of adoration, with an eye of love." -The Prelude, Book II. (Vol. III. p. 167).—ED. Or flowing from the universal face Of earth and sky. But he had felt the power By his intense conceptions, to receive Such was the Boy-but for the growing Youth Rise up, and bathe the world in light!* He looked- And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness Jay Beneath himt:-Far and wide the clouds were touched, And in their silent faces could he read2 In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, 1814. 1836. could he read Compare Book IV. p. 150; also "And washed by the morning water-gold Florence lay out on the mountain-side." ROBERT BROWNING: Old Pictures in Florence, St. 1. -ED. + The sea is not visible from the hills of Athole, except from the summit of Ben y' Gloe, where it can be seen to the south-east in the clearest weather. Wordsworth did not care for local accuracy in this passage. It was quite unnecessary for his purpose. Compare his account of the morning walk near Hawkshead in The Prelude, Vol. III. p. 202, and see the appendix-note to that volume, p. 413, &c.-ED. 1 Unutterable love. Sound needed none, * Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank The spectacle: sensation, soul, and form, In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living God, Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. A Herdsman on the lonely mountain tops, There did he see the writing;-all things there 1814. 1827. Responsive to the writing, all things there Compare Tintern Abbey, in which he speaks of the Rock, the Mountain, and the Wood, their colours and their forms, as an appetite, a feeling, and a joy, "That had no need of a remoter charm See Vol. I. p. 269.-ED. |