Hiss'd.

Avercamp, Enjoying the Ice Near a Town, 1620

SKATING

—In the frosty season, when the sun

Was set, and, visible for many a mile,

The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,

I heeded not the summons: happy time

It was indeed for all of us; for me

It was a time of rapture. Clear and loud

The village clock tolled six. I wheel’d about,

Proud and exulting, like an untired horse

That cares not for its home. All shod with steel,

We hiss’d along the polish’d ice in games

Confederate, imitative of the chase

And woodland pleasures,—the resounding horn,

The pack loud-bellowing, and the hunted hare.

So through the darkness and the cold we flew,

And not a voice was idle: with the din

Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud;

The leafless trees and every icy crag

Tingled like iron; while the distant hills

Into the tumult sent an alien sound

Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars,

Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west

The orange sky of evening died away.

Not seldom from the uproar I retired

Into a silent bay, or sportively

Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,

To cut across the image of a star

That gleam’d upon the ice; and oftentimes,

When we had given our bodies to the wind,

And all the shadowy banks on either side

Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still

The rapid line of motion, then at once

Have I, reclining back upon my heels,

Stopp’d short; yet still the solitary cliffs

Wheel’d by me, even as if the earth had roll’d

With visible motion her diurnal round.

Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,

Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watch’d

Till all was tranquil as a summer sea.

William Wordsworth