d
The struggling brook; tall spires of windle strae
Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,
And nought but knarled roots of ancient pines,
Branchless and blasted, clench'd with grasping roots
Th' unwilling soil. . . .
. . . . . . A gradual change was here,
Yet ghastly. For, _as fast years flow away,
The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin
And white; and where irradiate dewy eyes
Had shone, gleam stony orbs; so from his steps
Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade
Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds
And musical motions._ . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . Where the pass extends
Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks.
And seems with its accumulated crags
To overhang the world; for wide expand
Beneath the wan stars, and descending moon,
Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,
_Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom
Of leaden-colored even_, and _fiery hills
Mingling their flames with twilight_ on the verge
Of the remote horizon. The near scene
In naked, and severe simplicity
Made contrast with the universe. A pine
Rock-rooted, stretch'd athwart the vacancy
Its swinging boughs, to each _inconstant blast
Yielding one only response at each pause_,
In most familiar cadence, with the howl,
The thunder, and the hiss of _homeless_ streams,
Mingling its solemn song."

[Illustration: STUDY OF STONE PINE, AT SESTRI. From a drawing by
Ruskin.]

In this last passage, the mind never departs from its solemn possession
of the solitary scene, the imagination only giving weight, meaning, and
strange human sympathies to all its sights and sounds.

In that from Scott,[70]--the fancy, led away by the outside resemblance
of floating form and hue to the banners, loses the feeling and
possession of the scene, and places herself in circumstances of
character completely opposite to the quietness and grandeur of the
natural objects; this would have been unjustifiable, but that the
resemblance occurs to the mind of the