This and the preceding two exquisite poems of sympathy are far more
justified, more recollected and sincere than is that more
monumental composition, the famous poem of sympathy, Hartleap Well.
The most beautiful stanzas of this poem last-named are so rebuked
by the truths of nature that they must ever stand as obstacles to
the straightforward view of sensitive eyes upon the natural world.
Wordsworth shows us the ruins of an aspen-wood, a blighted hollow,
a dreary place forlorn because an innocent creature, hunted, had
there broken its heart in a leap from the rocks above; grass would
not grow, nor shade linger there -

"This beast not unobserved by Nature fell,
His death was mourned by sympathy divine."

And the signs of that sympathy are cruelly asserted to be these
arid woodland ruins--cruelly, because the common sight of the day
blossoming over the agonies of animals and birds is made less
tolerable by such fictions. We have to shut our ears to the benign
beauty of this stanza especially -

"The Being that is in the clouds and air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves,
Maintains a deep and reverential care
For the unoffending creature whom He loves."

We must shut our ears because the poet offers us, as a proof of
that "reverential care," the visible alteration of nature at the
scene of suffering--an alteration we are obliged to dispense with
every day we pass in the woods. We are tempted to ask whether