5

35

10

serene.

40

on

sea

or

15

— yet wise

45

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air; So once it would have been, — 'tis so no So like, so very like, was day to day!

more; Whene'er I looked, thy image still was I have submitted to a new control: there;

A power is gone, which nothing can reIt trembled, but it never passed away.

store;

A deep distress hath humanized my soul. How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep;

Not for a moment could I now behold No mood which season takes away or

A smiling sea, and be what have been: brings:

The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old; I could have fancied that the mighty This, which I know, I speak with mind

Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have

been the friend, Ah! then, if mine had been the painter's

If he had lived, of him whom I deplore, hand,

This work of thine I blame not, but comTo express what then I saw; and add the

mend; gleam,

This sea in anger, and that dismal shore. The light that never was, land,

Oh, 'tis a passionate work! The consecration and the poet's dream;

and well,

Well chosen is the spirit that is here; I would have planted thee, thou hoary That hulk which labors in the deadly Pile!

swell, Amid a world how different from this! This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear! Beside a sea that could not smile;

And this huge castle, standing here subOn tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. 20 lime,

I love to

see the look with which it Thou shouldst have seemed a

braves,

treasurehouse divine

Cased in the unfeeling armor of old time, Of peaceful years;

chronicle of

The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampheaven;

ling waves. Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine The very sweetest had to thee been given.

Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives

alone,

Housed in a dream, at distance from the A picture had it been of lasting ease,

Kind! Elysian quiet, without toil or strife; Such happiness, wherever it be known, 55 No motion but the moving tide, a breeze, Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind. Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer, Such, in the fond illusion of my heart, And frequent sights of what is to be Such picture would I at that time have borne! made:

Such sights, or worse, as are before me And seen the soul of truth in every part;

here. A steadfast peace that might not be be- Not without hope we suffer and

trayed.

a

cease

to

50

a

25

30

we

60

60

65

100

V

Some fragrant from his dream of human

life, Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: Shaped by himself with newly-learned art; The soul that rises with us, our life's star,

A wedding or a festival,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

A mourning or a funeral;
And cometh from afar:

And this hath now his heart, 95 Not in entire forgetfulness,

And unto this he frames his song: And not in utter nakedness,

Then will he fit his tongue But trailing clouds of glory do we come

To dialogues of business, love, or strife; From God, who is our home:

But it will not be long Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Ere this be thrown aside, Shades of the prison-house begin to close

And with new joy and pride Upon the growing Boy,

The little actor cons another part; But he beholds the light, and whence it

Filling from time to time his “humorous flows,

stage" He sees it in his joy ;

70

With all the persons, down to palsied The Youth, who daily farther from the

Age, east

That Life brings with her in her equiMust travel, still is Nature's Priest,

page; And by the vision splendid

As if his whole vocation
Is on his way attended;

Were endless imitation.
At length the Man perceives it die away, 75
And fade into the light of common day.

105

VIII

VI

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth be

lie Thy soul's immensity; Thou best philosopher, who yet dost

keep Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the Eternal

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her

own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural

kind, And, even with something of a mother's

mind, And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her inmate Man,

Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.

110

Deep,

80

115

VII

85

Haunted for ever by the Eternal Mind,

Mighty prophet! seer blest!

On whom those truths do rest Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the

grave; Thou, over whom thy immortality Broods like the Day, a master o'er a

slave, A presence which is not to be put by; Thou little Child, yet glorious in the

might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's

height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou

provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Behold the Child among his new-born

blisses, A six years' darling of a pigmy size! See, where 'mid work of his own hand he

lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's

eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or

chart,

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90