thy being.' after they were heard no more.' In 1803 William
7. Man in bondage, serf or slave. and Mary Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, and 1. One of the rare poems not based on Words-Coleridge toured Scotland, making a pilgrimage to worth's own experience. In a note published with Robert Burns's grave and visiting places mentioned
the poem in 1807, Wordsworth says that it was in Walter Scott's historical notes to his Minstrelsysuggested by a passage in Thomas Wilkinson's of the Scottish Border.
Tours to the British Mountains (1824), which he 2. Islands off the west coast of Scotland.
had seen in manuscript: 'Passed a female who was 3. The poet does not understand Erse, the lan
reaping alone: she sung in Erse [the Gaelic lan-guage in which she sings.
.
ELEGIA C STANZA S / 31 5 2530 Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending;? I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more. Nov. 5, 1805 1807
Elegiac Stanzas
Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle, in a Storm,
Painted by Sir George Beaumont1 I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!0 building
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. s 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;
io 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,
is 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;
20 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. 25 A Picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian2 quiet, without toil or strife;
1. A wealthy landscape painter who was Words-years before he saw Beaumont's painting. worth's patron and close friend. Peele Castle is on 2. Referring to Elysium, in classical my thology the
an island opposite Rampside, Lancashire, where peaceful place where those favored by the gods
Wordsworth had spent a month in 1794, twelve dwelled after death.
.
316 / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life. Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
30 Such Picture would I at that time have made:
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A stedfast peace that might not be betrayed. So once it would have been,?'tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:
35 A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised my Soul.3 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;
40 This, which I know, I speak with mind serene. Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend,
