[249] Compare, in the “Poems on the Naming of Places” (1805), the lines beginning, “When, to the attractions of the busy world,” l. 48-- A hoary pathway traced between the trees. ED. [250] The fifty-three small islands in the Ægean surrounding Delos, as with a circle (κύκλος)--hence the name.--ED. [251] Compare Coleridge’s _Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni_-- Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! ED. [252] Sol = Phoebus = Apollo.--ED. AIREY-FORCE VALLEY Published 1842 First published (1842) in “Poems, chiefly of Early and Late Years.” Afterwards one of the “Poems of the Imagination.”--ED. ----Not a breath of air Ruffles the bosom of this leafy glen. From the brook’s margin, wide around, the trees Are stedfast as the rocks; the brook itself, Old as the hills that feed it from afar, 5 Doth rather deepen than disturb the calm Where all things else are still and motionless. And yet, even now, a little breeze, perchance Escaped from boisterous winds that rage without, Has entered, by the sturdy oaks unfelt, 10 But to its gentle touch how sensitive Is the light ash! that, pendent from the brow Of yon dim cave,[253] in seeming silence makes A soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs, Powerful almost as vocal harmony 15 To stay the wanderer’s steps and soothe his thoughts. The Aira beck rises on the slopes of Great Dodd, passes Dockray, and enters Ullswater between Glencoin Park and Gowbarrow Park, about two miles from the head of the lake. The Force is quite near to _Lyulph’s Tower_, where the stream has a fall of about eighty feet. Compare the reference to it in _The Somnambulist_ (1833), and Wordsworth’s account of “Aira-Force,” in his _Guide through the District of the Lakes_, “Here is a powerful Brook, which dashes among rocks through a deep glen, hung on every side with a rich and happy intermixture of native wood; here are beds of luxuriant fern, aged hawthorns and hollies decked with honeysuckles; and fallow deer glancing and bounding over the lawns and through the thickets.”--ED. [253] An ash-tree may still be seen at Aira-Force.--ED. “LYRE! THOUGH SUCH POWER DO IN THY MAGIC LIVE” Composed 1842 (or earlier).--Published 1842 One of the “Poems of the Imagination.”--ED.