t hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. _And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things_."

In ll. 42-46, of _The Influence of Natural Objects_, we have an
inimitable Wordsworthian effect. Into the midst of his wild sport the
voice of Nature steals, and subdues his mind to receive the impulses of
peace and beauty from without. We involuntarily think of the boy he has
celebrated, his playmate upon Windermere, who loved to rouse the owls
with mimic hootings, but

"When a lengthened pause
Of silence came and baffled his best skill,
Then sometimes, in that silence while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind,
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake."
_The Prelude_, v. 379 f.

ELEGIAC STANZAS

COMPOSED 1805: PUBLISHED 1807.

Further references to John Wordsworth will be found in the following
poems:--_To the Daisy_ ("Sweet Flower"), _Elegiac Verses in Memory of My
Brother_, _When to the Attractions of the Busy World_, _The Brothers_,
and _The Happy Warrior_.

With lines 33-40, and 57-60, compare the _Intimations of Immortality_,
ll. 176-187:--

"What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind."

A BRIEF HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE SONNET

The sonnet form was introduced into English poetry by Sir Thomas Wyatt
and the Earl of Surrey. Their experiments in the sonnet were published
in _Tottel's M