Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/280

258 From the hard floor reverberated, then

It was Angelica thundering through the woods

Upon her palfrey, or that gentle maid

Erminia, fugitive as fair as she.

Sometimes methought I saw a pair of knights

Joust underneath the trees, that as in storm

Rocked high above their heads; anon, the din

Of boisterous merriment, and music's roar,

In sudden proclamation, burst from haunt

Of Satyrs in some viewless glade, with dance

Rejoicing o'er a female in the midst,

A mortal beauty, their unhappy thrall.

The width of those huge forests, unto me

A novel scene, did often in this way

Master my fancy while I wandered on

With that revered companion. And sometimes—

When to a convent in a meadow green,

By a brook-side, we came, a roofless pile,

And not by reverential touch of Time

Dismantled, but by violence abrupt—

In spite of those heart-bracing colloquies,

In spite of real fervour, and of that

Less genuine and wrought up within myself—

I could not but bewail a wrong so harsh,

And for the Matin-bell to sound no more