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With the morning's roseate Spirit,
Sweep their length of snowy line;

Or

survey the bright dominions In the gorgeous colours drest,

Flung from off the purple pinions,

Evening spreads throughout the west!

Thine are all the choral fountains
Warbling in each sparry vault

Of the untrodden lunar mountains;
Listen to their songs! — or halt,

To Niphate's top invited,
Whither spiteful Satan steered;
Or descend where the ark alighted,
When the green earth re-appeared;

For the power of hills is on thee,
As was witnessed through thine eye
Then, when old Helvellyn won thee
To confess their majesty!

III.

TO THE CUCKOO.

O BLITHE New-comer! I have heard,

I hear thee and rejoice

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,

Or but a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the grass

Thy twofold shout I hear,

That seems to fill the whole air's space,

As loud far off as near.

Though babbling only, to the Vale,

Of sunshine and of flowers,

Thou bringest unto me a tale

Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, Darling of the Spring!

Even yet thou art to me

No Bird: but an invisible Thing,

The same whom in my School-boy days

I listened to; that Cry

Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen.

And I can listen to thee yet;

Can lie upon the plain

And listen, till I do beget

That golden time again.

O blessed Bird! the earth we pace

Again appears to be

An unsubstantial, faery place;

That is fit home for Thee!

IV.

A NIGHT-PIECE.

THE sky is overcast

With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Checkering the ground-from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye

Bent earthwards; he looks up-the clouds are split
Asunder, - and above his head he sees

The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small

And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives; how fast they wheel away,

Yet vanish not! the wind is in the tree,

But they are silent; - still they roll along
Immeasurably distant;— and the vault,

Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.

At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.

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