But in two things his power of observation was unsurpassed, I think we may almost say, unrivalled: in sound, and in movement. For these he had what he describes in his sailor-brother, “a watchful heart Still couchant, an inevitable ear, And an eye practiced like a blind man’s touch.” In one of his juvenile poems, a sonnet describing the stillness of the world at twilight, he says: “Calm is all nature as a resting wheel; The kine are couched upon the dewy grass, The horse alone seen dimly as I pass, _Is cropping audibly his evening meal_.” At nightfall, while he is listening to the hooting of the owls and mocking them, there comes an interval of silence, and then “a gentle shock of mild surprise _Has carried far into his heart the voice_ _Of mountain torrents_.” At midnight, on the summit of Snowdon, from a rift in the cloud-ocean at his feet, he hears “the roar of waters, torrents, streams Innumerable, roaring with one voice.” Under the shadows of the great yew-trees of Borrowdalek he loves “To lie and listen to the mountain flood _Murmuring from Glaramara’s inmost caves_.” What could be more perfect than the little lyric which begins “Yes, it was the mountain echo Solitary, clear, profound, Answering to the shouting cuckoo Giving to her sound for sound.” How poignant is the touch with which he describes the notes of the fiery-hearted Nightingale, singing in the dusk: “they pierce and pierce; Tumultuous harmony and fierce!” But at sunrise other choristers make different melodies: “The birds are singing in the distant woods; Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods; The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters; And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.” Wandering into a lovely glen among the hills, he hears all the voices of nature blending together: “The Stream, so ardent in its course before, Sent forth such sallies of glad sound that all Which I till then had heard, appeared the voice Of common pleasure: beast and bird, the lamb, The shepherd’s dog, the linnet and the thrush Vied with this waterfall, and made a song, Which while I listened, seemed like the wild growth _Or like some natural produce of the air_ _That could not cease to be_.” Wordsworth, more than any other English poet, interprets and glorifies the mystery of sound. He is the poet who sits oftenest by the Ear-Gate listening to the whispers and murmurs of the invisible guests who throng that portal into “the city of Man-Soul.” Indeed the whole spiritual meaning of nature seems to come to him in the form of sound.