s,
I felt a sense of pain when I beheld
The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky.--
Then, dearest Maiden, move along these shades
In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand 55
Touch,--for there is a spirit in the woods.

5. OUR COTTAGE THRESHOLD. "The house at which I was boarded during the
time I was at school." (Wordsworth's note, 1800). The school was the
Hawkshead School.

9. TRICKED OUT=_dressed_. The verb "to trick"="to dress" is derived
probably from the noun, "trick" in the sense of 'a dexterous artifice,'
'a touch.' See "Century Dictionary."

CAST-OFF WEEDS=_cast-off clothes_. Wordsworth originally wrote 'of
Beggar's weeds.' What prompted him to change the expression?

10. FOR THAT SERVICE. i.e., for nutting.

12-13. OF POWER TO SMILE AT THORNS=_able to defy_, etc. Not because of
their strength, but because so ragged that additional rents were of small
account.

21. VIRGIN=_unmarred, undevastated_.

31. Explain the line. Notice the poetical way in which the poet conveys
the idea of solitude, (l. 30-32).

33. FAIRY WATER-BREAKS=_wavelets, ripples_. _Cf_.:--

Many a silvery _water-break_
Above the golden gravel.
Tennyson, _The Brook_.

36. FLEECED WITH MOSS. Suggest a reason why the term "fleeced" has
peculiar appropriateness here.

39-40. Paraphrase these lines to bring out their meaning.

43-48. THEN UP I ROSE. Contrast this active exuberant pleasure not
unmixed with pain with the passive meditative joy that the preceding
lines express.

47-48. PATIENTLY GAVE UP THEIR QUIET BEING. Notice the attribution of
life to inanimate nature. Wordsworth constantly held that there was a
mind and all the attributes of mind in nature. _Cf_. l. 56, "for there
is a spirit in the woods."

53. AND SAW THE INTRUDING SKY. Bring out the force of this passage.

54. THEN, DEAREST MAIDEN. This is a reference to the poet's Sister,
Dorothy Wordsworth.

56. FOR THERE IS A SPIRIT IN THE WOODS. _Cf. Tintern Abbey_, 101 f.

A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or starlight, thus from my first dawn 5
Of