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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extracts from the Excursion: [Twin Peaks of the Valley]

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: [Twin Peaks of the Valley]

(See full text.)

1795–1813

IN genial mood,

While at our pastoral banquet thus we sate

I could not, ever and anon, forbear

To glance an upward look on two huge Peaks,

That from some other vale peered into this.

‘Those lusty twins,’ exclaimed our host, ‘if here

It were your lot to dwell, would soon become

Your prized companions.—Many are the notes

Which, in his tuneful course, the wind draws forth

From rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and dashing shores;

And well those lofty brethren bear their part

In the wild concert—chiefly when the storm

Rides high; then all the upper air they fill

With roaring sound, that ceases not to flow,

Like smoke, along the level of the blast,

In mighty current; theirs, too, is the song

Of stream and headlong flood that seldom fails;

And, in the grim and breathless hour of noon,

Methinks that I have heard them echo back

The thunder’s greeting. Nor have nature’s laws

Left them ungifted with a power to yield

Music of finer tone; a harmony,

So do I call it, though it be the hand

Of silence, though there be no voice;—the clouds,

The mist, the shadows, light of golden suns,

Motions of moonlight, all come thither—touch,

And have an answer—thither come, and shape

A language not unwelcome to sick hearts

And idle spirits:—there the sun himself,

At the calm close of summer’s longest day,

Rests his substantial orb;—between those heights

And on the top of either pinnacle,

More keenly than elsewhere in night’s blue vault,

Sparkle the stars, as of their station proud.

Thoughts are not busier in the mind of man

Than the mute agents stirring there:—alone

Here do I sit and watch.’