Was frozen at its marvelous source;
The ’rapt One of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature.
In the sonnet which we now extract we have a specimen of that still ecstasy, so calm and so intense, in which Wordsworth stands almost alone among modern poets:
A fairer face of evening cannot be;
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the sea:
Listen! the mighty being is awake,