[Variant 4:  In the edition of 1827 and subsequent ones, Wordsworth here inserted a footnote, asking the reader to refer to No.  VI. of the “Poems on the Naming of Places,” beginning “When, to the attractions of the busy world,” p. 66.  His note of 1837 refers also to the poem which there precedes the present one, viz. the ’Elegiac Stanzas.’—­Ed.]

* * * * *

ELEGIAC STANZAS [A]

Suggested by A picture of Peele castle, in A storm,
painted by sir George Beaumont

Composed 1805.—­Published 1807

[Sir George Beaumont painted two pictures of this subject, one of which he gave to Mrs. Wordsworth, saying she ought to have it; but Lady Beaumont interfered, and after Sir George’s death she gave it to Sir Uvedale Price, at whose house at Foxley I have seen it.—­I.  F.]

Placed by Wordsworth among his “Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.”—­Ed.

  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! 5
  So like, so very like, was day to day! 
  Whene’er I looked, thy Image still was there;
  It trembled, but it never passed away.

  How perfect was the calm! it seemed 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.

  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; [1]

  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

  Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine [2]
  Of peaceful years; a chronicle of heaven;—­
  Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
  The very sweetest had to thee been given.

  A Picture had it been of lasting ease, 25
  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 [3] of my heart,
  Such Picture would I at that time have made:  30
  And seen the soul of truth in every part,
  A stedfast peace that might not be betrayed. [4]

  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; 35
  A deep distress hath humanised my Soul.