But to its gentle touch how sensitive
Is the light ash! that, pendent from the brow
Of yon dim cave,[253] in seeming silence makes
A soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs,
Powerful almost as vocal harmony 15
To stay the wanderer’s steps and soothe his thoughts.
The Aira beck rises on the slopes of Great Dodd, passes Dockray, and enters Ullswater between Glencoin Park and Gowbarrow Park, about two miles from the head of the lake. The Force is quite near to Lyulph’s Tower, where the stream has a fall of about eighty feet. Compare the reference to it in The Somnambulist (1833), and Wordsworth’s account of “Aira-Force,” in his Guide through the District of the Lakes, “Here is a powerful Brook, which dashes among rocks through a deep glen, hung on every side with a rich and happy intermixture of native wood; here are beds of luxuriant fern, aged hawthorns and hollies decked with honeysuckles; and fallow deer glancing and bounding over the lawns and through the thickets.”—Ed.
[253] An ash-tree may still be seen at Aira-Force.—Ed.