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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extracts from the Excursion: [Among the Mountains]

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

Extracts from the Excursion: [Among the Mountains]

(See full text.)

(Greek Divinities)

ONCE more to distant ages of the world

Let us revert, and place before our thoughts

The face which rural solitude might wear

To the unenlightened swains of pagan Greece.

—In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretched

On the soft grass through half a summer’s day,

With music lulled his indolent repose:

And, in some fit of weariness, if he

When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear

A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds

Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched,

Even from the blazing chariot of the sun,

A beardless Youth, who touched a golden lute,

And filled the illumined groves with ravishment.

The nightly hunter, lifting a bright eye

Up towards the crescent moon, with grateful heart

Called on the lovely wanderer who bestowed

That timely light, to share his joyous sport:

And hence, a beaming Goddess with her Nymphs,

Across the lawn and through the darksome grove,

Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes

By echo multiplied from rock or cave,

Swept in the storm of chase; as moon and stars

Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven,

When winds are blowing strong. The traveller slaked

His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thanked

The Naiad. Sunbeams, upon distant hills

Gliding apace, with shadows in their train,

Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed

Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly.

The Zephyrs fanning, as they passed, their wings,

Lacked not, for love, fair objects whom they wooed

With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque,

Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age,

From depth of shaggy covert peeping forth

In the low vale, or on steep mountain side;

And, sometimes, intermixed with stirring horns

Of the live deer, or goat’s depending beard,—

These were the lurking Satyrs, a wild brood

Of gamesome Deities; or Pan himself,

The simple shepherd’s awe-inspiring God!