From little enmities and low desires—
The gift is yours.'
Not only did his observant eye catch each variety of form, each passing tint of colour on his hills and valleys, he felt, as no poet before his time had done, the might and majesty of the forces by which, in the mountain-world, we are shown how the surface of the world is continually modified.
'To him was given
Full many a glimpse of Nature's processes
Upon the exalted hills.'
The thought of these glimpses led to one of the noblest outbursts in the whole range of his poetry, where he gives way to the exuberance of his delight in feeling himself, to use Byron's expression, 'a portion of the tempest'—
'To roam at large among unpeopled glens
And mountainous retirements, only trod