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 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:
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.
Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine
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,
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—’tis 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.