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Old household thoughts, in which thou hadst thy share ;
But for some precious boons vouchsafed to thee,
Found scarcely any where in like degree!
For love, that comes wherever life and sense
Are given by God, in thee was most intense; 1
A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind,
A tender sympathy, which did thee bind
Not only to us Men, but to thy Kind:
Yea, for thy fellow-brutes in thee we saw
A soul2 of love, love's intellectual law :--
Hence, if we wept, it was not done in shame ;
Our tears from passion and from reason came,
And, therefore, shalt thou be an honoured name!

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TO THE DAISY

Composed 1805.--Published 1815

Placed by Wordsworth among his " Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces."-ED.

SWEET Flower! belike one day to have
A place upon thy Poet's grave,

I welcome thee once more :

But He, who was on land, at sea,
My Brother, too, in loving thee,
Although he loved more silently,
Sleeps by his native shore.

Ah! hopeful, hopeful was the day
When to that Ship he bent his way,
To govern and to guide :

His wish was gained: a little time

1 1837.

For love, that comes to all; the holy sense,
Best gift of God, in thee was most intense;

2 1837.

The soul

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Would bring him back in manhood's prime

And free for life, these hills to climb;
With all his wants supplied.

And full of hope day followed day

While that stout Ship at anchor lay

Beside the shores of Wight;

The May had then made all things green;
And, floating there, in pomp serene,

That Ship was goodly to be seen,

His pride and his delight!

Yet then, when called ashore, he sought
The tender peace of rural thought:
In more than happy mood

To your abodes, bright daisy Flowers!
He then would steal at leisure hours,
And loved you glittering in your bowers,
A starry multitude.

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But hark the word!-the ship is gone ;-
Returns from her long course : 1-anon

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-At length delivered from the rock,

The deep she hath regained;

And through the stormy night they steer;
Labouring for life, in hope and fear,

To reach a safer shore 2

Yet not to be attained!

1 1837.

-how near,

From her long course returns:—

2 1837.

Towards a safer shore

1815.

1815.

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"Silence!" the brave Commander cried ;
To that calm word a shriek replied,
It was the last death-shriek.

-A few (my soul oft sees that sight)
Survive upon the tall mast's height;1
But one dear remnant of the night—
For Him in vain I seek.

Six weeks beneath the moving sea
He lay in slumber quietly;
Unforced by wind or wave

To quit the Ship for which he died,
(All claims of duty satisfied ;)

And there they found him at her side;
And bore him to the grave.

Vain service! yet not vainly done
For this, if other end were none,
That He, who had been cast
Upon a way of life unmeet

For such a gentle Soul and sweet,
Should find an undisturbed retreat
Near what he loved, at last-

That neighbourhood of grove and field
To Him a resting-place should yield,

A meek man and a brave!

The birds shall sing and ocean make

A mournful murmur for his sake;

And Thou, sweet Flower, shalt sleep and wake
Upon his senseless grave.*

1 1837.

*

-A few appear by morning light,

Preserved upon the tall mast's height:
Oft in my Soul I see that sight;

1815.

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* 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,*

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!
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 ;1

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1807.

and add a gleam,

The lustre, known to neither sea nor land,
But borrowed from the youthful Poet's dream;

1820.

* The original title, in MS., was Verses suggested, etc.-ED.

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 divine1
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 2 of my heart,
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.3

So once it would have been, 'tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:

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1 1845.

The edition of 1832 returns to the text of 1807.*

a treasure-house, a mine

*

1807.

The whole of this stanza was omitted in the editions of 1820-1843,

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A faith, a trust, that could not be betray'd.

1807.

1807.

* Many years ago Principal Shairp wrote to me, "Have you noted how the two lines, 'The light that never was,' etc., stood in the edition of 1827? I know no other such instance of a change from commonplace to perfection of ideality." The Principal had not remembered at the time that the "perfection of ideality" was in the original edition of 1807. The curious thing is that the prosaic version of 1820 and 1827 ever took its place. Wordsworth's return to his original reading was one of the wisest changes he introduced into the text of 1832.-ED.

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