huge and mighty forms that do not live Like living men

Turns out Wordsworth was kind of a raw dude.

            "In thought and wish

That time, my shoulder all with springes hung,

I was a fell destroyer. On the heights

Scudding away from snare to snare, I plied

My anxious visitation, hurrying on,

Still hurrying, hurrying onward; moon and stars

Were shining o’er my head; I was alone,

And seem’d to be a trouble to the peace

That was among them. Sometimes it befell

In these night-wanderings, that a strong desire

O’erpower’d my better reason, and the bird

Which was the captive of another’s toils

Became my prey; and when the deed was done

I heard among the solitary hills

Low breathing coming after me, and sounds

O undistinguishable motion, steps

Almost as silent as the turf they trod.

Nor less in springtime when on southern banks

The shining sun had from his knot of leaves

Decoy’d the primrose flower, and when the Vales

And woods were warm, was I a plunderer then

In the high places, on the lonesome peaks

Where’er, among the mountains and the winds,

The Mother Bird had built her lodge. Though mean

My object , and inglorious, yet the end

Was not ignoble. Oh! when I have hung

Above the raven’s nest, by knots of grass

And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock

But ill sustain’d, and almost, as it seem’d,

Suspended by the blast which blew amain,

Shouldering the naked crag; Oh! at that time,

While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,

With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind

Blow through my ears! the sky seem’d not a sky

Of earth, and with what motion moved the clouds!

………………….

A rocky Steep uprose

Above the Cavern of the Willow tree

And now, as suited one who proudly row’d

With his best skill, I fix’d a steady view

Upon the top of that same craggy ridge,

The bound of the horizon, for behind

Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.

She was an elfin Pinnace; lustily

I dipp’d my oars into the silent Lake,

And, as I rose upon the stroke, my Boat

Went heaving through the water like a Swan;

When from behind that craggy Steep, till then

The bound of the horizon, a huge Cliff,

As if with voluntary power instinct,

Uprear’d its head. I struck and struck again,

And, growing still in stature the huge Cliff,

Rose up between me and the stars and still,

With measur’d motion like a living thing,

Strode after me. With trembling hands I turn’d,

And through the silent water stole my way

Back to the cavern of the Willow tree.

There, in the morning-place, I left my Bark,

And, through the meadows homeward went with grave

And serious thoughts; and after I had seen

That spectacle, for many days, my brain

Work’d with a dim and undetermin’d sense

Of unknown modes of being; in my thoughts

There was a darkness, call it solitude,

Or blank desertion, no familiar shapes

Of hourly objects, images of trees,

Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;

But huge and mighty forms that do not live

Like living men mov’d slowly through my mind

By day and were the trouble of my dreams."

I have felt that, when walking in the open country alone, when hour after hour goes by with not one other living thing either before or behind or around. Sometimes the empty field itself seems to hold some observing absence in its centre, even in the sunlight in clear day, something that makes you turn and check behind you several times, with nothing there but empty space.