“Wonder not If high the transport, great the joy I felt, Communing in this sort through earth and heaven With every form of creature, as it looked Towards the Uncreated with a countenance Of adoration, with an eye of love. One song they sang, and it was audible, Most audible, then, when the fleshly ear, O’ercome by humblest prelude of that strain, Forgot her functions and slept undisturbed.” No less wonderful is his sense of the delicate motions of nature, the visible transition of form and outline. How exquisite is the description of a high-poising summer-cloud, “That heareth not the loud winds when they call; And moveth all together, if it move at all.” He sees the hazy ridges of the mountains like a golden ladder, “Climbing suffused with sunny air To stop—no record hath told where!” He sees the gentle mists “Curling with unconfirmed intent On that green mountain’s side.” He watches the swan swimming on Lake Lucarno,— “Behold!—as with a gushing impulse heaves That downy prow, and softly cleaves The mirror of the crystal flood, Vanish inverted hill and shadowy wood.” He catches sight of the fluttering green linnet among the hazel-trees: “My dazzled sight he oft deceives, A Brother of the dancing leaves.” He looks on the meadows sleeping in the spring sunshine: “The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising, There are forty feeding like one!” He beholds the far-off torrent pouring down Ben Cruachan: “Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice; Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye, Frozen by distance.” Now in such an observation of Nature as this, so keen, so patient, so loving, so delicate, there is an immediate comfort for the troubled mind, a direct refuge and repose for the heart. To see and hear such things is peace and joy. It is a consolation and an education. Wordsworth himself has said this very distinctly. “One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man Of moral evil and of good Than all the sages can.” But the most perfect expression of his faith in the educating power of Nature is given in one of the little group of lyrics which are bound together by the name of Lucy,—love-songs so pure and simple that they seem almost mysterious in their ethereal passion. “Three years she grew in sun and shower, Then Nature said, ‘A lovelier flower On earth was never sown; This Child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A Lady of my own. Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse; and with me The Girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle or restrain. ... The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, _And beauty born of murmuring sound_ _Shall pass into her face_.’”