Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 1.djvu/106

46 That cares not for its home.—All shod with steel

We hissed along the polished ice, in games

Confederate, imitative of the Chase

And woodland pleasures,—the resounding horn,

The Pack loud-bellowing, and the hunted hare.

So through the darkness and the cold we flew,

And not a voice was idle: with the din

Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud;

The leafless trees and every icy crag

Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills

Into the tumult sent an alien sound

Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars,

Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west

The orange sky of evening died away.

Not seldom from the uproar I retired

Into a silent bay,—or sportively

Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,

To cut across the image of a Star

That gleamed upon the ice: and oftentimes,

When we had given our bodies to the wind,

And all the shadowy banks on either side

Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still

The rapid line of motion, then at once