There is nothing very grand or impressive in this passage, and therefore it is a better illustration for my purpose.  Note how happily the one image, out of a thousand possible images by which November might be characterised, is chosen to call up in us the feeling of the lonely scene; and with what delicate selection the calm of summer nights, the “trembling lake” (an image in an epithet), and the gloomy hills, are brought before us.  His boyhood might have furnished him with a hundred different pictures, each as distinct as this; the power is shown in selecting this one—­painting it so vividly.  He continues:—­

“’Twas mine among the fields both day and night
And by the waters, all the summer long. 
And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and, visible for many a mile
The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,
I heeded not the summons:  happy time
It was indeed for all of us; for me
It was a time of rapture!  Clear and loud
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
And woodland pleasures—­the resounding horn,
The pack loud-chiming and the hunted hare.”

There is nothing very felicitous in these lines; yet even here the poet, if languid, is never false.  As he proceeds the vision brightens, and the verse becomes instinct with life:—­

“So through the darkness and the cold we flew
And not a voice was idle:  with the din
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
the leafless trees and every icy Crag
tinkled like iron; while the distant hills
into the tumult sent an alien sound
of melancholy, not unnoticed while the stars
Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west
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;
image that flying still before me gleamed
Upon the glassy plain:  and oftentime
When we had given our bodies to the wind
and all the shadowy Banks on either side
came creeping through the darkness, spinning still
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! 
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a summer sea.”