Classic Poem

Call the strange spirit that abides unseen
In wilds and wastes and shaggy solitudes,
And bid his dim hand lead thee through these scenes
That burst immense around—by mountains, glens,
And solitary cataracts that dash
Through dark ravines, and trees whose wreathéd roots
O'erhang the torrent's channelled course, and streams
That far below, along the narrow vale,
Upon their rocky way wind musical!
Stranger, if Nature charm thee—if thou lovest
To trace her awful steps, in glade or glen,
Or under covert of the rocking wood
That sways its murmuring and mossy boughs
Above thy head—now, when the wind at times
Stirs its deep silence round thee, and the shower
Falls on the sighing foliage, hail her here
In these her haunts, and, wrapt in musings high,
Think that thou holdest converse with some power
Invisible and strange …
Here Melancholy, on the pale crags laid,
Might muse herself to sleep; or Fancy come,
Witching the mind with tender cozenage,
And shaping things that are not—here all day
Might Meditation listen to the lapse
Of the white waters flashing through the cleft,
And, gazing on the many shadowing trees,
Mingle a pensive moral as she gazed.
High o'er thy head, amidst the shivered slate,
Behold (a sapling yet) the wild ash bend,
Its dark red berries clustering, as if it wished
In the clear liquid mirror, ere it fell,
To trace its beauties. O'er the prone cascade,
Airy, and light, and elegant, the birch
Displays its glossy stem amidst the gloom
Of alders and jagg'd fern, as she wooed
The passing gale to whisper flatteries!
Upon the adverse bank, withered, and stripped
Of all its pleasant leaves, a scathéd oak
Hangs desolate …
Now wind we up the glen, and hear below
The dashing torrent, in deep woods concealed—
And now, again, white water flashing on the view
O'er the huge craggy fragments! Ancient stream,
That murmurest through the mountain-solitudes,
The time has been when no eye marked thy course
Save his who made the world. Fancy might dream
She saw thee thus bound on from age to age
Unseen of man, whilst awful Nature sat
On the rent rocks, and said: ‘These haunts be mine!’
Now Taste has marked thy features, here and there
Touching with tender hand, but injuring not,
Thy beauties—whilst along thy woody verge
Ascends the winding pathway, and the eye
Catches at intervals thy varied falls.