A Night-Piece, poem by William Wordsworth:

A Night-Piece

Poem by William Wordsworth.

The sky is overcast
With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Chequering the ground – from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent earthwards; he looks up – the clouds are split
Asunder, – and above his head he sees
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not! – the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent; – still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault,
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.
At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.

Recommended reading:

William Wordsworth Selected Poems

Video by Jack Kost.
2025.

Photograph:

Night Light (2023), by Jack Kost.

Sound effect credit:

Wind Gusts Late Autumn

by freesound_community
from Pixabay.

William Wordsworth, on writing:

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

- William Wordsworth.

Born on this day – William Wordsworth:

William Wordsworth

Writer

April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850

Credits:

A Letter to A Friend of Robert Burns (1816); An Evening Walk (1793); Descriptive Sketches (1793); Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822); Lyrical Ballads (1798); Miscellaneous Poems of William Wordsworth (1820); Peter Bell (1819); Poems (1807); Poems (1815); Poems of Wordsworth (1879); Selections from the Poems of William Wordsworth (1831); Thanksgiving Ode (1816); The Cornell Wordsworth (1975); The Excursion (1849); The Poems of William Wordsworth (1845); The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth (various editions 1824–1854); The Prelude 1799, 1805, 1850 (1979); The Prelude, Or Growth of a Poet's Mind (1850); The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (1876); The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (1974); The Recluse (1888); The River Duddon (1820); The Sonnets of William Wordsworth (1838); The Waggoner (1819); The White Doe of Rylstone: or The Fate of the Nortons (1815); Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland (1818); William Wordsworth: Selected Poems and Prefaces (1965); William Wordsworth: The Poems (1981); Wordsworth's Literary Criticism (1905).