How disappeared He?--ask the newt and toad, Inheritors of his abode; The otter crouching undisturbed, In her dank cleft;--but be thou curbed, O froward Fancy! 'mid a scene 75 Of aspect winning and serene; For those offensive creatures shun The inquisition of the sun! And in this region flowers delight, And all is lovely to the sight. 80 IX Spring finds not here a melancholy breast, When she applies her annual test To dead and living; when her breath Quickens, as now, the withered heath;-- Nor flaunting[25] Summer--when he throws 85 His soul into the briar-rose; Or calls the lily from her sleep Prolonged beneath the bordering deep; Nor Autumn, when the viewless wren Is warbling near the BROWNIE'S Den. 90 X Wild Relique! beauteous as the chosen spot In Nysa's isle, the embellished grot;[G] Whither, by care of Libyan Jove, (High Servant of paternal Love) Young Bacchus was conveyed--to lie 95 Safe from his step-dame Rhea's eye; Where bud, and bloom, and fruitage, glowed, Close-crowding round the infant-god; All colours,--and the liveliest streak A foil to his celestial cheek! 100 The text of this poem was unaltered in the successive editions with a single exception, occurring in the first line. It was suggested by, and was a reminiscence of the tour in Scotland of 1814; but in 1803 Wordsworth visited the same spot alluded to in the Fenwick note, accompanied by his sister, who thus describes it: "The most remarkable object we saw was a huge single stone, I believe three or four times the size of Bowder Stone. The top of it, which on one side was sloping like the roof of a house, was covered with heather.... The ferryman told us that a preaching was held there once in three months by a certain minister--I think of Arrochar--who engages, as a part of his office, to perform the service. The interesting feelings we had connected with the Highland Sabbath and Highland worship returned here with double force. The rock, though on one side a high perpendicular wall, in no place overhung so as to form a shelter, in no place could it be more than a screen from the elements. Why then had it been selected for such a purpose? Was it merely from being a central situation and a conspicuous object? Or did there belong to it some inheritance of superstition from old times? It is impossible to look at the stone without asking, How came it hither? Had then that obscurity and unaccountableness, that mystery of power which is about it, any influence over the first persons who resorted hither for worship? Or have they now on those who continue to frequent it? The lake is in front of the perpendicular wall, and behind, at some distance, and totally detached from it, is the