[This note was written when S. T. C. was staying with Wordsworth at the Hall Farm, Coleorton.]
MOONLIGHT GLEAMS AND MASSY GLORIES
In the first [entrance to the wood] the spots of moonlight of the wildest outlines, not unfrequently approaching so near to the shape of man and the domestic animals most attached to him as to be easily confused with them by fancy and mistaken by terror, moved and started as the wind stirred the branches, so that it almost seemed like a flight of recent spirits, sylphs and sylphids dancing and capering in a world of shadows. Once, when our path was over-canopied by the meeting boughs, as I halloed to those a stone-throw behind me, a sudden flash of light dashed down, as it were, upon the path close before me, with such rapid and indescribable effect that my life seemed snatched away from me—not by terror but by the whole attention being suddenly and unexpectedly seized hold of—if one could conceive a violent blow given by an unseen hand, yet without pain or local sense of injury, of the weight falling here or there, it might assist in conceiving the feeling. This I found was occasioned by some very large bird, who, scared by my noise, had suddenly flown upward, and by the spring of his feet or body had driven down the branch on which he was aperch.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] When instead of the general feeling of the lifeblood in its equable individual motion, and the consequent wholeness of the one feeling of the skin, we feel as if a heap of ants were running over us—the one corrupting into ten thousand—so in araneosis, instead of the one view of the air, or blue sky, a thousand specks, etc., dance before the eye. The metaphor is as just as, of a metaphor, anyone has a right to claim, but it is clumsily expressed.
[C] I have the same anxiety for my friend now in England as for myself, that is to be, or may be, two months hence.
[D] "A prison so constructed that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times without being seen by them."