Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 1.djvu/105

45 The elements of feeling and of thought,

And sanctifying by such discipline

Both pain and fear,—until we recognise

A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me

With stinted kindness. In November days

When vapours, rolling down the vallies, made

A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods

At noon; and mid the calm of summer nights,

When, by the margin of the trembling Lake,

Beneath the gloomy hills, I homeward went

In solitude, such intercourse was mine:

'Twas mine among the fields both day and night,

And by the waters all the summer long.

And in the frosty season, when the sun

Was set, and, visible for many a mile,

The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,

I heeded not the summons:—happy time

It was indeed for all of us; for me

It was a time of rapture!—Clear and loud

The village clock tolled six—I wheeled about,

Proud and exulting like an untired horse