A Night-Piece

William Wordsworth 1770 (Wordsworth House) – 1850 (Cumberland)



------The sky is overcast
With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Chequering the ground--from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent earthwards; he looks up--the clouds are split
Asunder,--and above his head he sees
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not!--the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent;--still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault,
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.
At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

56 sec read
332

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRNSTUVWXD
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,125
Words 189
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 26

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was the husband of Eva Bartok. more…

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    Quiz

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    From which London landmark did Wordsworth celebrate the view in his poem beginning: "Earth has not any thing to show more fair..."
    A Westminster Bridge
    B Waterloo Sunset
    C The Tower of London
    D Hampstead Heath