Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/110

84 Exclaimed our Host, "if here you dwelt, would be

Your prized Companions.—Many are the notes

Which in his tuneful course the wind draws forth

From rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and dashing shores;

And well those lofty Brethren bear their part

In the wild concert—chiefly when the storm

Rides high; then all the upper air they fill

With roaring sound, that ceases not to flow,

Like smoke, along the level of the blast

In mighty current; theirs, too, is the song

Of stream and headlong flood that seldom fails;

And, in the grim and breathless hour of noon,

Methinks that I have heard them echo back

The thunder's greeting:—nor have Nature's laws

Left them ungifted with a power to yield

Music of finer frame; a harmony,

So do I call it, though it be the hand

Of silence, though there be no voice;—the clouds,

The mist, the shadows, light of golden suns,

Motions of moonlight, all come thither—touch,

And have an answer—thither come, and shape

A language not unwelcome to sick hearts

And idle spirits:—there the sun himself