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His very feet bright as the dazzling snow

Which they are touching; yea far brighter, even
As that which comes, or seems to come, from heaven,
Surpasses aught these elements can show.

Much she rejoiced, trusting that from that hour
Whate'er befel she could not grieve or pine;
But the Transfigured, in and out of season,
Appeared, and spiritual presence gained a power
Over material forms that mastered reason.
O, gracious Heaven, in pity make her thine!

III.

But why that prayer? as if to her could come
No good but by the way that leads to bliss
Through Death, so judging we should judge amiss.
Since reason failed want is her threatened doom,
Yet frequent transports mitigate the gloom:
Nor of those maniacs is she one that kiss

The air or laugh upon a precipice;

No, passing through strange sufferings towards the tomb

She smiles as if a martyr's crown were won:

Oft, when light breaks through clouds or waving trees,

With outspread arms and fallen upon her knees

The Mother hails in her descending Son

An Angel, and in earthly ecstacies

Her own angelic glory seems begun.

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TO THE CLOUDS.*

Pub. 1842.

[These verses were suggested while I was walking on the foot-road between Rydal Mount and Grasmere. The clouds were driving over the top of Nab-Scar across the vale: they set my thoughts a-going, and the rest followed almost immediately.]

ARMY of Clouds! ye wingèd Host in troops
Ascending from behind the motionless brow
Of that tall rock,† as from a hidden world,
O whither with1 such eagerness of speed?
What seek ye, or what shun ye? of the gale2
Companions, fear ye to be left behind,
Or racing o'er3 your blue ethereal field
Contend ye with each other? of the sea
Children, thus post ye over vale and height 4
To sink upon your mother's lap-and rest ?5
Or were ye rightlier hailed, when first mine eyes

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* The title in the edition of 1842 was Address to the Clouds.-ED.

+ See the Fenwick note.-ED.

Beheld in your impetuous march the likeness
Of a wide army pressing on to meet
Or overtake some unknown enemy?—
But your smooth motions suit a peaceful aim;
And Fancy, not less aptly pleased, compares
Your squadrons to an endless flight of birds
Aerial, upon due migration bound

To milder climes; or rather do ye urge
In caravan your hasty pilgrimage

To pause at last on more aspiring heights
Than these, and utter your devotion there
With thunderous voice? Or are ye jubilant,
And would ye, tracking your proud lord the Sun,
Be present at his setting; or the pomp

Of Persian mornings would ye fill, and stand
Poising your splendours high above the heads.
Of worshippers kneeling to their up-risen God?
Whence, whence, ye Clouds! this eagerness of speed?
Speak, silent creatures.-They are gone, are fled,
Buried together in yon gloomy mass

That loads the middle heaven; and clear and bright
And vacant doth the region which they thronged
Appear; a calm descent of sky conducting
Down to the unapproachable abyss,

Down to that hidden gulf from which they rose.
To vanish-fleet as days and months and years,
Fleet as the generations of mankind,

Power, glory, empire, as the world itself,

The lingering world, when time hath ceased to be.
But the winds roar, shaking the rooted trees,
And see a bright precursor to a train
Perchance as numerous, overpeers the rock
That sullenly refuses to partake

Of the wild impulse. From a fount of life

Invisible, the long procession moves
Luminous or gloomy, welcome to the vale
Which they are entering, welcome to mine eye
That sees them, to my soul that owns in them,

And in the bosom of the firmament

O'er which they move, wherein they are contained, A type of her capacious self and all

Her restless progeny.

A humble walk

Here is my body doomed to tread, this path,
A little hoary line and faintly traced,*
Work, shall we call it, of the shepherd's foot
Or of his flock?-joint vestige of them both.
I pace it unrepining, for my thoughts

Admit no bondage and my words have wings.
Where is the Orphean lyre, or Druid harp,
To accompany the verse? The mountain blast
Shall be our hand of music; he shall sweep
The rocks, and quivering trees, and billowy lake,
And search the fibres of the caves, and they
Shall answer, for our song is of the Clouds,
And the wind loves them; and the gentle gales-
Which by their aid re-clothe the naked lawn
With annual verdure, and revive the woods,
And moisten the parched lips of thirsty flowers-—
Love them; and every idle breeze of air
Bends to the favourite burthen. Moon and stars
Keep their most solemn vigils when the Clouds
Watch also, shifting peaceably their place
Like bands of ministering Spirits, or when they lie,
As if some Protean art the change had wrought,

In listless quiet o'er the ethereal deep

*

Compare

"A hoary pathway traced between the trees," in the Poems on the Naming of Places (1805).-Ed.

Scattered, a Cyclades of various shapes

And all degrees of beauty. O ye Lightnings !
Ye are their perilous offspring; † and the Sun-
Source inexhaustible of life and joy,

And type of man's far-darting reason, therefore
In old time worshipped as the god of verse,
A blazing intellectual deity-

Loves his own glory in their looks, and showers
Upon that unsubstantial brotherhood.

Visions with all but beatific light

Enriched-too transient were they not renewed
From age to age, and did not, while we gaze
In silent rapture, credulous desire

Nourish the hope that memory lacks not power
To keep the treasure unimpaired. Vain thought!

Yet why repine, created as we are

For joy and rest, albeit to find them only
Lodged in the bosom of eternal things?

AIREY-FORCE VALLEY.

Pub. 1842.

NOT a breath of air

Ruffles the bosom of this leafy glen.

From the brook's margin, wide around, the trees
Are stedfast as the rocks; the brook itself,

Old as the hills that feed it from afar,

Doth rather deepen than disturb the calm
Where all things else are still and motionless.

The fifty-three small islands in the Ægean surrounding Delos, as with a circle (Kúkλos)-hence the name.-ED.

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"Ye lightnings,

Ye dread arrows of the clouds."

-Coleridge's Hymn in the Vale of Chamouny.—Ed.

Phoebus Apollo.-ED.

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