And lays as prompt would hail the dawn of Night: Build, at thy choice, or sing, by pool or fount, Is with that wholesome office satisfied, 1834. VI. SOFT as a cloud is yon blue Ridge-the Mere But, from the process in that still retreat, Observe how dewy Twilight has withdrawn That, while the sun rode high, was lost beneath their dazzling sheen. -An emblem this of what the sober Hour 'Tis well-but what are helps of time and place, When wisdom stands in need of nature's grace; Why do good thoughts, invoked or not, descend, 1 Like Angels from their bowers, our virtues to befriend; If yet To-morrow, unbelied, may say, "I come to open out, for fresh display, The elastic vanities of yesterday ?" K VOL. IV. 1834. VII. [COMPOSED by the side of Grasmere lake. The mountains that enclose the vale, especially towards Easdale, are most favorable to the reverberation of sound. There is a passage in the Excursion towards the close of the fourth book, where the voice of the raven in flight is traced through the modifications it undergoes, as I have often heard it in that vale and others of this district. "Often, at the hour When issue forth the first pale stars, is heard, Within the circuit of this fabric huge, One voice-tho solitary raven."] THE leaves that rustled on this oak-crowned hill, From the hushed vale's realities, transferred To the still lake) the imaginative Bird Seems, 'mid inverted mountains, not unheard. Grave Creature!-whether, while the moon shines bright On thy wings opened wide for smoothest flight, Thou art discovered in a roofless tower, Rising from what may once have been a lady's bower; Or, from a rifted crag or ivy tod Thou giv'st, for pastime's sake, by shriek or shout, May the night never come, nor day be seen, Of sapience in thy aspect, headless Owl! VIII. 1834. [REPRINTED at the request of my Sister, in whose presence the lines were thrown off.] This Impromptu appeared, many years ago, among the Author's poems, from which, in subsequent editions, it was excluded. THE sun has long been set, The stars are out by twos and threes, The little birds are piping yet Among the bushes and trees; There's a cuckoo, and one or two thrushes, And a sound of water that gushes, And the cuckoo's sovereign cry With that beautiful soft half-moon, And all these innocent blisses ? On such a night as this is! IX. 1804. COMPOSED UPON AN EVENING OF EXTRAORDINARY SPLENDOUR AND BEAUTY. [FELT and in a great measure composed upon the little mount in front of our abode at Rydal. In concluding my notices of this class of poems it may be as well to observe that among the "Miscellaneous Sonnets" are a few alluding to morning impressions which might be read with mutual benefit in connection with these "Evening Voluntaries." See, for example, that one on Westminster Bridge, that composed on a May morning, the one on the song of the Thrush, and that beginning"While beams of orient light shoot wide and high."] I. HAD this effulgence disappeared With flying haste, I might have sent, Of blank astonishment; But 'tis endued with power to stay, And sanctify one closing day, |