To what wild blasts of tyrannous harmony
Uprose these rocky walls, mass threatening mass,
Dusk, shapeless shapes, around a desolate pass?
What deep heart of the ancient hills set free
The passion, the desire, the destiny
Of this lost stream? Yon clouds that break and form,
Light vanward squadrons of the joyous storm,
They gather hither from what untrack’d sea?
Primeval kindred! here the mind regains
Its vantage ground against the world; here thought
Wings up the silent waste of air on broad
Undaunted pinion; man’s imperial pains
Are ours, and visiting fears, and joy unsought,
Native resolve, and partnership with God.
III. THE CASTLE
(In Scotland)
The tenderest ripple touched and touched the shore;
The tenderest light was in the western sky;—
Its one soft phrase, closing reluctantly,
The sea articulated o’er and o’er
To comfort all tired things; and one might pore,
Till mere oblivion took the heart and eye,
On that slow-fading, amber radiancy
Past the long levels of the ocean-floor.
A turn,—the castle fronted me, four-square,
Holding its seaward crag, abrupt, intense
Against the west, an apparition bold
Of naked human will; I stood aware,
With sea and sky, of powers unowned of sense,
Presences awful, vast, and uncontrolled.
IV. Άισθητιχή φαντασία
(In Ireland)
The sound is in my ears of mountain streams!
I cannot close my lids but some grey rent
Of wildered rock, some water’s clear descent
In shattering crystal, pine-trees soft as dreams
Waving perpetually, the sudden gleams
Of remote sea, a dear surprise of flowers,
Some grace or wonder of to-day’s long hours
Straightway possesses the moved sense, which teems
With fantasy unbid. O fair, large day!
The unpractised sense brings heavings from a sea
Of life too broad, and yet the billows range,
The elusive footing glides. Come, Sleep, allay
The trouble with thy heaviest balms, and change
These pulsing visions to still Memory.
V. ON THE SEA-CLIFF
(In Ireland)