Page:Types of Scenery and Their Influence on Literature.djvu/65

 the might and majesty of the forces by which, in the mountain-world, we are shown how the surface of the world is continually modified.

To him was given Full many a glimpse of Nature's processes Upon the exalted hills.

The thought of these glimpses led to one of the noblest outbursts in the whole range of his poetry, where he gives way to the exuberance of his delight in feeling himself, to use Byron's expression, 'a portion of the tempest'—

To roam at large among unpeopled glens And mountainous retirements, only trod By devious footsteps; regions consecrate To oldest time; and reckless of the storm, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . while the mists Flying, and rainy vapours, call out shapes And phantoms from the crags and solid earth, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and while the streams Descending from the region of the clouds, And starting from the hollows of the earth, More multitudinous every moment, rend Their way before them—what a joy to roam An equal amongst mightiest energies!

In this passage Wordsworth seems to have had what he would have called 'a foretaste, a dim earnest' of that marvellous enlargement of the charm and interest of scenery due to the progress of modern science. When he speaks of 'regions consecrate to oldest time,' he had a vague feeling that somehow his glens and mountains belonged to a hoary antiquity, such as could be claimed by none of the verdant plains around. Had he written half a century later he would have enjoyed a clearer perception of the vastness of that antiquity