Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/147

BOOK V.] One of those open fields, which, shaped like ears,

Make green peninsulas on Esthwaite's Lake:

Twilight was coming on, yet through the gloom

Appeared distinctly on the opposite shore

A heap of garments, as if left by one

Who might have there been bathing. Long I watched,

But no one owned them; meanwhile the calm lake

Grew dark with all the shadows on its breast,

And, now and then, a fish up-leaping snapped

The breathless stillness. The succeeding day,

Those unclaimed garments telling a plain tale

Drew to the spot an anxious crowd; some looked

In passive expectation from the shore,

While from a boat others hung o'er the deep,

Sounding with grappling irons and long poles.

At last, the dead man, 'mid that beauteous scene

Of trees and hills and water, bolt upright

Rose, with his ghastly face, a spectre shape

Of terror; yet no soul-debasing fear,

Young as I was, a child not nine years old,

Possessed me, for my inner eye had seen

Such sights before, among the shining streams

Of faëry land, the forest of romance.

Their spirit hallowed the sad spectacle

With decoration of ideal grace;