Nature and the Poet
William Wordsworth, 1807

_Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, painted by
     Sir George Beaumont._

     I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
     Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
     I saw thee every day; and all the while
     Thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

     So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
     So like, so very like, was day to day!
     Whene'er I look'd, thy image still was there;
     It trembled, but it never pass'd away.

     How perfect was the calm! It seem'd no sleep,
     No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
     I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
     Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.

     Ah! then if mine had been the painter's hand
     To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
     The light that never was on sea or land,
     The consecration, and the Poet's dream,--

     I would have planted thee, thou hoary pile,
     Amid a world how different from this!
     Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
     On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

     A picture had it been of lasting ease,
     Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
     No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
     Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.

     Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
     Such picture would I at that time have made;
     And seen the soul of truth in every part,
     A steadfast peace that might not be betray'd.

     So once it would have been,--'tis so no more
     I have submitted to a new control:
     A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
     A deep distress hath humanised my soul.

     Not for a moment could I now behold
     A smiling sea, and be what I have been:
     The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;
     This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

     Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the friend
     If he had lived, of him whom I deplore,
     This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
     This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

     O 'tis a passionate work!--yet wise and well,
     Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
     That hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
     This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!

     And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
     I love to see the look with which it braves,
     --Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time--
     The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.

     Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
     Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
     Such happiness, wherever it be known,
     Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.

     But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
     And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
     Such sights, or worse, as are before me here:
     Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.