Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 18801918. Vol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti | | Extracts from the Excursion: [The Moon among Trees] | By William Wordsworth (17701850) |
| WITHIN the soul a faculty abides, | |
That with interpositions, which would hide | |
And darken, so can deal that they become | |
Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt | |
Her native brightness. As the ample moon, | 5 |
In the deep stillness of a summer even | |
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove, | |
Burns, like an unconsuming fire of light, | |
In the green trees; and, kindling on all sides | |
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil | 10 |
Into a substance glorious as her own, | |
Yea, with her own incorporated, by power | |
Capacious and serene:Like power abides | |
In mans celestial spirit; virtue thus | |
Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds | 15 |
A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire, | |
From the encumbrances of mortal life, | |
From error, disappointmentnay, from guilt; | |
And sometimes, so relenting justice wills, | |
From palpable oppressions of despair. | 20 | | |
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