| 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. | |
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| So pure the sky, so quiet was the air! | 5 |
| 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. | |
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| How perfect was the calm! It seem'd no sleep, | |
| No mood, which season takes away, or brings; | 10 |
| I could have fancied that the mighty Deep | |
| Was even the gentlest of all gentle things. | |
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| 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, | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
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| 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. | |
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| Such, in the fond illusion of my heart, | 25 |
| 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: | 30 |
| A power is gone, which nothing can restore; | |
| A deep distress hath humanized 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; | 35 |
| 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. | 40 |
| |
| Oh '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; | |
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| And this huge castle, standing here sublime, | 45 |
| 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! | 50 |
| 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:— | 55 |
| Not without hope we suffer and we mourn. | |
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