Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 1.djvu/127

67 When gentle Spirits urged a sportive chace,

Brushing with lucid wands the water's face;

While music, stealing round the glimmering deeps,

Charmed the tall circle of th' enchanted steeps.

—The lights are vanished from the watry plains:

No wreck of all the pageantry remains.

Unheeded Night has overcome the vales:

On the dark earth the baffled vision fails;

The latest lingerer of the forest train,

The lone black fir, forsakes the faded plain;

Last evening sight, the cottage smoke no more,

Lost in the thickened darkness, glimmers hoar;

And, towering from the sullen dark-brown mere,

Like a black wall, the mountain steeps appear.

—Now o'er the soothed accordant heart we feel

A sympathetic twilight slowly steal,

And ever, as we fondly muse, we find

The soft gloom deepening on the tranquil mind.

Stay! pensive, sadly-pleasing visions, stay!

Ah no! as fades the vale, they fade away.

Yet still the tender, vacant gloom remains;

Still the cold cheek its shuddering tear retains.

The bird, who ceased, with fading light, to thread

Silent the hedge or steaming rivulet's bed,