Our sacred hearths shall burn eternally As vestal flames; the North-wind, he Shall strike his frost-stretched wings, dissolve, and fly This Ætna in epitome. Dropping December shall come weeping in, Bewail th' usurping of his reign; But when in showers of old Greek* we begin, Shall cry, he hath his crown again! Night as clear Hesper shall our tapers whip From the light casements where we play, And the dark hag from her black mantle strip, And stick there everlasting day. *Greek wine. And when we came in front of that tall rock That eastward looks, I there stopped short, and stood Tracing the lofty barrier with my eye From base to summit; such delight I found To note in shrub and tree, in stone and flower, That intermixture of delicious hues, In one impression, by connecting force Of their own beauty, imaged in the heart. When I had gazed perhaps two minutes' space, Joanna, looking in my eyes, beheld That ravishment of mine, and laughed aloud. The Rock, like something starting from a sleep, Took up the Lady's voice, and laughed again; That ancient Woman seated on Helm-crag Was ready with her cavern; Ham Carried the Lady's voice, -old Skid daw blew His speaking-trumpet; back out of the clouds Of Glaramara southward came the voice; And Kirkstone tossed it from his misty head. "Now whether" (said I to our cordial friend, Who in the hey-day of astonishment Smiled in my face), "this were in simple truth A work accomplished by the brotherhood Of ancient mountains, or my ear was touched With dreams and visionary impulses To me alone imparted, sure I am That there was a loud uproar in the hills." And while we both were listening, to my side The fair Joanna drew, as if she wished To shelter from some object of her fear. And hence long afterwards, when eighteen moons Were wasted, as I chanced to walk alone Beneath this rock, at sunrise, on a calm And silent morning, I sat down, and there, In memory of affections old and true, I chiselled out in those rude charac As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the sunbeams, Or likest hovering dreams The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy, Hail divinest Melancholy, Whose saintly visage is too bright Black, but such as in esteem seem, Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove To set her beauty's praise above The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended: Yet thou art higher far descended; Thee bright-hair'd Vesta, long of yore, To solitary Saturn bore; His daughter she (in Saturn's reign, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: With a sad leaden downward cast Thou fix them on the earth as fast: And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, Spare Fast, that oft with Gods doth diet, And hears the Muses in a ring Him that yon soars on golden wing, Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, The Cherub Contemplation; And the mute Silence hist along, 'Less Philomel will deign a song, In her sweetest, saddest plight, Smoothing the rugged brow of night, While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke, Gently o'er th' accustomed oak; Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! I woo, to hear thy even-song; And oft, as if her head she bow'd, room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom; Or let my lamp at midnight hour The spirit of Plato, to unfold The immortal mind, that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook: And of those Demons that are found In fire, air, flood, or under ground, Or the tale of Troy divine, Or call up him that left half told And of the wondrous horse of brass, side, And when the sun begins to fling His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring To arched walks of twilight groves, And shadows brown that Sylvan loves Of pine, or monumental oak, Where the rude axe with heavèd stroke Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt, Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt. There in close covert by some brook, Entice the dewy-feather'd Sleep; And let some strange mysterious dream Wave at his wings in aery stream And as I wake, sweet music breathe THERE is a stream, I name not its name, lest inquisitive tourist Hunt it, and make it a lion, and get it at last into guide-books, Springing far off from a loch unexplored in the folds of great mountains, Falling two miles through rowan and stunted alder, enveloped Then for four more in a forest of pine, where broad and ample Spreads, to convey it, the glen with heathery slopes on both sides: Broad and fair the stream, with occasional falls and narrows; But, where the glen of its course approaches the vale of the river, Met and blocked by a huge interposing mass of granite, Scarce by a channel deep-cut, raging up and raging onward, Forces its flood through a passage so narrow a lady would step it, There, across the great rocky wharves, a wooden bridge goes, Carrying a path to the forest; below, three hundred yards, say Lower in level some twenty-five feet, through flats of shingle, Stepping-stones and a cart-track cross in the open valley. But in the interval here the boiling, pent-up water Frees itself by a final descent, attaining a basin, Ten feet wide and eighteen long, with whiteness and fury Occupied partly, but mostly pellucid, pure, a mirror; Beautiful there for color derived from green rocks under; Beautiful, most of all, where beads of foam uprising Mingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the stillness. Cliff over cliff for its sides, with rowan and pendent birch-boughs, Here it lies, unthought of above at the bridge and pathway, Still more enclosed from below by wood and rocky projection. You are shut in, left alone with yourself and perfection of water, Hid on all sides, left alone with yourself and the goddess of bathing. Here, the pride of the plunger, you stride the fall and clear it; Here, the delight of the bather, you roll in beaded sparklings, Here into pure green depth drop down from lofty ledges. Hither, a month agone, they had come, and discovered it; hither (Long a design, but long unaccountably left unaccomplished), Leaving the well-known bridge and pathway above to the forest, Turning below from the track of the carts over stone and shingle, Piercing a wood, and skirting a narrow and natural causeway Under the rocky wall that hedges the bed of the streamlet, Rounded a craggy point, and saw on a sudden before them Slabs of rock, and a tiny beach, and perfection of water, Picture-like beauty, seclusion sublime, and the goddess of bathing. There they bathed, of course, and Arthur, the glory of headers, Leapt from the ledges with Hope, he twenty feet, he thirty; There, overbold, great Hobbes from a ten-foot height descended, Prone, as a quadruped, prone with hands and feet protending; There in the sparkling champagne, ecstatic, they shrieked and shouted. 66 "Hobbes's gutter," the Piper entitles the spot, profanely, Hope the Glory would have, after Arthur, the glory of headers: But, for before they departed, in shy and fugitive reflex Here in the eddies and there did the splendor of Jupiter glim mer, Adam adjudged it the name of Hesperus, star of the evening. Hither, to Hesperus, now, the star of evening above them, Come in their lonelier walk the pupils twain and Tutor; Turned from the track of the carts, and passing the stone and shingle, Piercing the wood, and skirting the stream by the natural causeway, Rounded the craggy point, and now at their ease looked up; and Lo, on the rocky ledge, regardant, the Glory of headers, Lo, on the beach, expecting the plunge, not cigarless, the Piper. And they looked, and wondered, incredulous, looking yet once |