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 betrayed.

So once it would have been; 't is so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:

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;

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.

*His brother, Captain John Wordsworth, who was lost at sea.

Oh, 't is a passionate work

yet wise and well,

Well chosen is the spirit that is here; That hulk which labors in the deadly swell, This rueful sky, this pageantry of sear.

And this huge castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armor 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.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1805.

What is it? a learned man

Could give it a clumsy name!
Let him name it who can,

The beauty would be the same.

The tiny cell is forlorn,

Void of the little living will
That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house in a rainbow frill?
Did he push, when he was uncurled,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Thro' his dim water-world?

Slight, to be crushed with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand,
Small, but a work divine,
Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap
The three-decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock,
Here on the Breton strand.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

THE RECOLLECTION.

I.

E wandered to the pine forest

WE

That skirts the ocean's foam;

The lightest wind was in its nest,

The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep
The smile of Heaven lay;

It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise.

II.

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,

Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced.

And soothed by every azure breath,
That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,

As tender as its own;

Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,

Like green waves on the sea, As still as in the silent deep

The ocean-woods may be.

How calm it was!

III.

the silence there

By such a chain was bound, That even the busy woodpecker

Made stiller by her sound The inviolable quietness;

The breath of peace we drew With its soft motion made not less The calm that round us grew. There seemed from the remotest seat Of the wide mountain waste, To the soft flower beneath our feet, A magic circle traced, A spirit interfused around, A thrilling silent life;

To momentary peace it bound

Our mortal nature's strife;

And still I felt the centre of

The magic circle there,

Was one fair form that filled with love

The lifeless atmosphere.

IV.

We paused beside the pools that lie.
Under the forest bough;

Each seemed as 't were a little sky
Gulfed in a world below;