And oft, when that dread vision hath past by, [121]
  He holds with God himself communion high,
  There where the peal [122] of swelling torrents fills
  The sky-roofed temple of the eternal hills;
  Or, when upon the mountain’s silent brow 465
  Reclined, he sees, above him and below,
  Bright stars of ice and azure fields of snow;
  While needle peaks of granite shooting bare
  Tremble in ever-varying tints of air. 
  And when a gathering weight of shadows brown 470
  Falls on the valleys as the sun goes down;
  And Pikes, of darkness named and fear and storms, [Z]
  Uplift in quiet their illumined forms, [123]
  In sea-like reach of prospect round him spread,
  Tinged like an angel’s smile all rosy red—­ 475
  Awe in his breast with holiest love unites,
  And the near heavens impart their own delights. [124]

    When downward to his winter hut he goes,
  Dear and more dear the lessening circle grows;
  That hut which on the hills so oft employs 480
  His thoughts, the central point of all his joys. [125]
  And as a swallow, at the hour of rest,
  Peeps often ere she darts into her nest,
  So to the homestead, where the grandsire tends
  A little prattling child, he oft descends, 485
  To glance a look upon the well-matched pair; [126]
  Till storm and driving ice blockade him there. 
  There, [127] safely guarded by the woods behind,
  He hears the chiding of the baffled wind,
  Hears Winter calling all his terrors round, 490
  And, blest within himself, he shrinks not from the sound. [128]

    Through Nature’s vale his homely pleasures glide,
  Unstained by envy, discontent, and pride;
  The bound of all his vanity, to deck,
  With one bright bell, a favourite heifer’s neck; 495
  Well pleased [129] upon some simple annual feast,
  Remembered half the year and hoped the rest,
  If dairy-produce, from his inner hoard,
  Of thrice ten summers dignify [130] the board. 
 —­Alas! in every clime a flying ray 500
  Is all we have to cheer our wintry way;
  [131]
  And here the unwilling mind [132] may more than trace
  The general sorrows of the human race: 
  The churlish gales of penury, that blow
  Cold as the north-wind o’er a waste of snow, [133] 505
  To them [134] the gentle groups of bliss deny
  That on the noon-day bank of leisure lie. 
  Yet more;—­compelled by Powers which only deign
  That solitary man disturb their reign,
  Powers that support an unremitting [135] strife 510
  With all the tender charities of life,
  Full oft the father, when his sons have grown
  To manhood, seems their title to disown; [136]
  And from his nest [137] amid the storms of heaven
  Drives, eagle-like, those sons as he was driven; 515
  With stern composure [138] watches to the plain—­
  And never, eagle-like, beholds again!