Painted by Sir G. H. Beaumont, Bart.
Composed 1811.—Published 1815
[This was written when we dwelt in the Parsonage at Grasmere. The principal features of the picture are Bredon Hill and Cloud Hill near Coleorton. I shall never forget the happy feeling with which my heart was filled when I was impelled to compose this Sonnet. We resided only two years in this house, and during the last half of the time, which was after this poem had been written, we lost our two children, Thomas and Catherine. Our sorrow upon these events often brought it to my mind, and cast me upon the support to which the last line of it gives expression—
"The appropriate calm of blest eternity."
It is scarcely necessary to add that we still possess the Picture.—I. F.]
Included among the "Miscellaneous Sonnets." In 1815 the title was simply Upon the Sight of a Beautiful Picture.—Ed.
Praised be the Art whose subtle power could stay
Yon cloud, and fix it in that glorious shape;
Nor would permit the thin smoke to escape,[A]
Nor those bright sunbeams to forsake the day;
Which stopped that band of travellers on their way, 5
Ere they were lost within the shady wood;
And showed the Bark upon the glassy flood
For ever anchored in her sheltering bay.
Soul-soothing Art! whom[1] Morning, Noon-tide, Even,
Do serve with all their changeful pageantry; 10
Thou, with ambition modest yet sublime,
Here, for the sight of mortal man, hast given
To one brief moment caught from fleeting time
The appropriate calm of blest eternity,[B]
Compare the Elegiac Stanzas, suggested by a picture of Peele Castle, in a Storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont—especially the first three, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh stanzas. (See vol. iii. p. 54.)
In the letter written to Sir George Beaumont from Bootle, in 1811—partly quoted in the note to the previous poem ([p. 268])—Wordsworth says, "A few days after I had enjoyed the pleasure of seeing, in different moods of mind, your Coleorton landscape from my fireside, it suggested to me the following sonnet, which—having walked out to the side of Grasmere brook, where it murmurs through the meadows near the Church—I composed immediately—
Praised be the Art ...
"The images of the smoke and the travellers are taken from your picture; the rest were added, in order to place the thought in a clear point of view, and for the sake of variety."—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[1] C. and 1838.
... which ... 1815.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Compare, in Pope's Moral Essays, ii. 19—
Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it
Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute.Ed.
[B] Compare, in the Elegiac Stanzas, suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle, in a Storm (vol. iii. p. 55)—
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife.Ed.
TO THE POET, JOHN DYER
Composed 1811.—Published 1815
Classed among the "Miscellaneous Sonnets." In the edition of 1815 the title was, To the Poet, Dyer.—Ed.
Bard of the Fleece, whose skilful genius made
That work a living landscape fair and bright;
Nor hallowed less with musical delight
Than those soft scenes through which thy childhood strayed,
Those southern tracts of Cambria, deep embayed, 5
With green hills fenced, with[1] ocean's murmur lull'd;[A]
Though hasty Fame hath many a chaplet culled
For worthless brows, while in the pensive shade
Of cold neglect she leaves thy head ungraced,
Yet pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still, 10
A grateful few, shall love thy modest Lay,
Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray
O'er naked Snowdon's wide aërial waste;
Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill!
John Dyer, author of Grongar Hill (1726), and The Fleece (1757), was born at Aberglasney, in Caermarthenshire, in 1698, and died in 1758. Both Akenside and Gray, before Wordsworth's time, had signalised his merit, in opposition to the dicta of Johnson and Horace Walpole. The passage which Wordsworth quotes is from The Fleece, in which Dyer is referring to his own ancestors, who were weavers, and "fugitives from superstition's rage," and who brought the art of weaving "from Devon" to
that soft tract
Of Cambria, deep-embayed, Dimetian land,
By green hills fenced, by ocean's murmur lulled.
It will be observed that Wordsworth quotes this last line of Dyer accurately in the edition of 1815, but changed it in 1827.
This sonnet was possibly written before 1811, as in a letter to Lady Beaumont, dated November 20, 1811, he speaks of it as written "some time ago." In that letter Wordsworth writes thus of Dyer:—"His poem is in several places dry and heavy, but its beauties are innumerable, and of a high order. In point of imagination and purity of style, I am not sure that he is not superior to any writer of verse since the time of Milton." He then transcribes his sonnet, and adds—"In the above is one whole line from The Fleece, and also other expressions. When you read The Fleece, you will recognise them."—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[1] 1827.
By green hills fenced, by ... 1815.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Compare Dyer's Fleece, book iii.—Ed.
1812
The years 1812 and 1813 were poetically even less productive than 1811 had been. The first of them was saddened by domestic losses, which deprived the poet, for a time, of the power of work, and almost of any interest in the labour to which his life was devoted. Three short pieces are all that belong to 1812 and 1813 respectively.—Ed.