Seemed ever round him lingering to stay,
And every step of progress to disown;
As with all sail the bark may breast the tide,
Nor yet advance, but rather backward glide.
XXXIX.
Above his head the branches writhe and bend,
Or in the mingled wreck their ruin flies;
The storm redoubles, and the whirlwinds blend
The rising snow-drift with descending skies:
And oft the crags a friendly shelter lend
His breathless bosom, and his sightless eyes;
But, when the transient gust its fury spends,
Amid the storm again his way he wends.
XL.
Still truly does his course the magnet keep—
No toils fatigue him, and no fears appal;
Oft turns he at the glimpse of swampy deep,
Or thicket dense, or crag abrupt and tall,
Or backward treads to shun the headlong steep,
Or pass above the tumbling waterfall;
Yet still rejoices when the torrent's leap,
Or crag abrupt, or thicket dense, or swamp's far sweep?
XLI.
Assures him progress.—From gray morn till noon—
Hour after hour—from that drear noon until
The evening's gathering darkness had begun
To clothe with deeper glooms the vale and hill,
Sire Williams journeyed in the forest lone;
And then night's thickening shades began to fill
His soul with doubt—for shelter he had none—
And all the outstretched waste was clad with one
