"Not for this
Faint I nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but 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