Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 1.djvu/31

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PREFACE.
xxiii

and in reference to the motion and appearance of the sublime object to which it is compared.

From images of sight we will pass to those of sound:

"Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;"

of the same bird,

"His voice was buried among trees,
Yet to be come at by the breeze;"

"O, Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?"

The Stock-dove is said to coo, a sound well imitating the note of the bird; but, by the intervention of the metaphor broods, the affections are called in by the imagination to assist in marking the manner in which the Bird reiterates and prolongs her soft note, as if herself delighting to listen to it, and participating of a still and quiet satisfaction, like that which may be supposed inseparable from the continuous process of incubation. "His voice was buried