It Is A
Comfort To Him To Have A Full Moon On These Lonely
Expeditions, And Despite His Tremors He Is Able To Appreciate
The Beauty Of The Scene.
With saunt'ring steps he climbs the distant stile,
Whilst all around him wears a placid smile;
There views the
White-robed clouds in clusters driven
And all the glorious pageantry of heaven.
Low on the utmost bound'ry of the sight
The rising vapours catch the silver light;
Thence fancy measures as they parting fly
Which first will throw its shadow on the eye,
Passing the source of light; and thence away
Succeeded quick by brighter still than they.
For yet above the wafted clouds are seen
(In a remoter sky still more serene)
Others detached in ranges through the air,
Spotless as snow and countless as they're fair;
Scattered immensely wide from east to west
The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest.
This is almost the only passage in the poem in which something
of the vastness of visible nature is conveyed. He saw the
vastness only in the sky on nights with a full moon or when he
made a telescope of his hat to watch the flight of the lark.
It was not a hilly country about his native place, and his
horizon was a very limited one, usually bounded by the
hedgerow timber at the end of the level field. The things he
depicts were seen at short range, and the poetry, we see, was
of a very modest kind.
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