Both pain and fear, until we recognise
  A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. 
  Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me 415
  With stinted kindness.  In November days,
  When vapours rolling down the valley made
  A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods
  At noon, and ’mid the calm of summer nights,
  When, by the margin of the trembling lake, 420
  Beneath the gloomy hills homeward I went
  In solitude, such intercourse was mine;
  Mine was it in the fields both day and night,
  And by the waters, all the summer long.

    And in the frosty season, when the sun 425
  Was set, and visible for many a mile
  The cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom,
  I heeded not their summons:  happy time
  It was indeed for all of us—­for me
  It was a time of rapture!  Clear and loud 430
  The village clock tolled six,—­I wheeled about,
  Proud and exulting like an untired horse
  That cares not for his home.  All shod with steel,
  We hissed along the polished ice in games
  Confederate, imitative of the chase 435
  And woodland pleasures,—­the resounding horn,
  The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare. 
  So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
  And not a voice was idle; with the din
  Smitten, the precipices rang aloud; 440
  The leafless trees and every icy crag
  Tinkled like iron; [g] while far distant hills
  Into the tumult sent an alien sound
  Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars
  Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west 445
  The orange sky of evening died away. 
  Not seldom from the uproar I retired
  Into a silent bay, or sportively
  Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
  To cut across the reflex of a star 450
  That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed
  Upon the glassy plain; and oftentimes,
  When we had given our bodies to the wind,
  And all the shadowy banks on either side
  Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still 455
  The rapid line of motion, then at once
  Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
  Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
  Wheeled by me—­even as if the earth had rolled
  With visible motion her diurnal round! 460
  Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
  Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
  Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep. [h]