Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,

Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy:
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing—there

As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!

Awake, my soul! not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake, Voice of sweet song! Awake, my Heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the Vale! O struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged Rocks,

For ever shattered and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your

joy,

Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded, (and the silence came,)
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Adown enormous ravines slope amainTorrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge! Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living
flowers

Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?--
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome
voice!

Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like
sounds!

And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!

Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the element !

Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!

Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,

Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure

serene

Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast-
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain ! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
To rise before me-1
-Rise, O ever rise,

Rise like a cloud of incense, from the Earth!
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,

Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER HIS RECITATION OF A POEM ON THE GROWTH OF AN

INDIVIDUAL MIND.

FRIEND of the wise! and teacher of the good!
Into my heart have I received that lay
More than historic, that prophetic lay
Wherein (high theme, by thee first sung aright!)
Of the foundations and the building up
Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell
What may be told, to the understanding mind
Revealable; and what within the mind,
By vital breathings secret as the soul

Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart
Thoughts all too deep for words! -

Theme hard as high,

Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears,
(The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth,)
Of tides obedient to external force,

And currents self-determined, as might seem,
Or by some inner power; of moments awful,
Now in thy inner life, and now abroad,

When power streamed from thee, and thy soul

received

The light reflected, as a light bestowed-
Of fancies fair, and milder hours of youth,
Hyblean murmurs of poetic thought
Industrious in its joy, in vales and glens
Native or outland, lakes and famous hills!
Or on the lonely high-road, when the stars
Were rising; or by secret mountain-streams,
The guides and the companions of thy way!

Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense Distending wide, and man beloved as man, Where France in all her towns lay vibrating Like some becalmed bark beneath the burst Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud Is visible, or shadow on the main.

For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded Amid the tremor of a realm aglow,

Amid a mighty nation jubilant,

When from the general heart of human kind
Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity!

-Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down, So summoned homeward, thenceforth calm and

sure

From the dread watch-tower of man's absolute

self,

With light unwaning on her eyes, to look

Far on-herself a glory to behold,

The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)