A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised 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.

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40

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the

Friend,

If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore,

This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

O'tis a passionate Work !—yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That Hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!

And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,

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50

The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.

Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,

Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,

55

Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,

And frequent sights of what is to be borne !
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.——
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.

60

There is a Peele Castle, on a small rocky island, close to the town of Peele, in the Isle of Man; yet separated from it, much as St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall is separated from the

mainland. This castle was believed by many to be the one which Sir George painted, and which gave rise to the foregoing lines. I visited it in 1879, being then ignorant that any other Peele Castle existed; and although, the day being calm, and the season summer, I thought Sir George had idealized his subject much—(as I had just left Coleorton, where the picture still exists)—I accepted the customary opinion. But I am now convinced, both from the testimony of the Arnold family,* and as the result of a visit to Piel Castle, near Barrow in Furness, that Wordsworth refers to it. The late Bishop of Lincoln, in his uncle's Memoirs (vol. i. p. 299), quotes the line "I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged pile," and adds, "He had spent four weeks there of a college summer vacation at the house of his cousin, Mr. Barker." This house was at Rampside, the village opposite Piel, on the coast of Lancashire. The "rugged pile," too, now "cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,” painted by Beaumont, is obviously this Piel Castle near Barrow. I took the engraving of his picture with me, when visiting it : and although Sir George-after the manner of landscape artists of his day—took many liberties with his subjects, it is apparent that it was this, and not Peele Castle in Mona, that he painted. The "four summer weeks" referred to in the first stanza, were those spent at Piel during the year 1794.

With the last verse of these Elegiac Stanzas compare stanzas ten and eleven of the Ode, Intimations of Immortality, vol. viii. One of the two pictures of "Peele Castle in a Storm"engraved by S. W. Reynolds, and published in the editions of Wordsworth's poems of 1815 and 1820-is still in the Beaumont Gallery at Coleorton Hall.

The poem is so memorable that I have arranged to make this picture of "Peele Castle in a Storm," the vignette to vol. xv. of this edition. It deserves to be noted that it was to the pleading of Barron Field that we owe the restoration of the original line of 1807,

The light that never was, on sea or land.

An interesting account of Piel Castle will be found in Hearne and Byrne's Antiquities. It was built by the Abbot of Furness in the first year of the reign of Edward III.-ED.

* Miss Arnold wrote to me, in December 1893: "I have never doubted that the Peele Castle of Wordsworth is the Piel off Walney Island. I know that my brother Matthew so believed, and I went with him some years ago from Furness Abbey over to Piel, visiting it as the subject of the picture and the poem."-ED.

ELEGIAC VERSES,

IN MEMORY OF MY BROTHER, JOHN WORDSWORTH, COMMANDER OF THE E. I. COMPANY'S SHIP, THE EARL OF ABERGAVENNY, IN WHICH HE PERISHED BY CALAMITOUS SHIPWRECK, FEB. 6TH, 1805.

Composed near the Mountain track, that leads from Grasmere through Grisdale Hawes, where it descends towards Patterdale.

Composed 1805.-Published 1842

["Here did we stop; and here looked round,
While each into himself descends."

The point is two or three yards below the outlet of Grisedale Tarn, on a foot-road by which a horse may pass to Patterdalea ridge of Helvellyn on the left, and the summit of Fairfield on the right.-I. F.]

This poem was included among the "Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces."-ED.

I

THE Sheep-boy whistled loud, and lo!
That instant, startled by the shock,
The Buzzard mounted from the rock
Deliberate and slow:

Lord of the air, he took his flight ;
Oh! could he on that woeful night
Have lent his wing, my Brother dear,
For one poor moment's space to Thee,
And all who struggled with the Sea,
When safety was so near.

II

Thus in the weakness of my heart
I spoke (but let that pang be still)
When rising from the rock at will,
I saw the Bird depart.

5

ΙΟ

And let me calmly bless the Power
That meets me in this unknown Flower,
Affecting type of him I mourn!
With calmness suffer and believe,

And grieve, and know that I must grieve,
Not cheerless, though forlorn.

III

Here did we stop; and here looked round
While each into himself descends,
For that last thought of parting Friends
That is not to be found.

Hidden was Grasmere Vale from sight,
Our home and his, his heart's delight,
His quiet heart's selected home.
But time before him melts away,
And he hath feeling of a day
Of blessedness to come.

IV

Full soon in sorrow did I weep,
Taught that the mutual hope was dust,
In sorrow, but for higher trust,
How miserably deep!

All vanished in a single word,

A breath, a sound, and scarcely heard.
Sea-Ship-drowned-Shipwreck—so it came,

The meek, the brave, the good, was gone;
He who had been our living John

Was nothing but a name.

V

That was indeed a parting! oh,

Glad am I, glad that it is past;

For there were some on whom it cast
Unutterable woe.

But they as well as I have gains ;——

45

From many a humble source, to pains

Like these, there comes a mild release;

Even here I feel it, even this Plant
Is in its beauty ministrant

To comfort and to peace.

VI

He would have loved thy modest grace,

Meek Flower! To Him I would have said,

"It grows upon its native bed

Beside our Parting-place;

There, cleaving to the ground, it lies

With multitude of purple eyes,

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55

Spangling a cushion green like moss;

But we will see it, joyful tide!
Some day, to see it in its pride,
The mountain will we cross."

VII

-Brother and friend, if verse of mine
Have power to make thy virtues known,
Here let a monumental Stone
Stand-sacred as a Shrine;

And to the few who pass this way,
Traveller or Shepherd, let it say,
Long as these mighty rocks endure,-
Oh do not Thou too fondly brood,

Although deserving of all good,

On any earthly hope, however pure!

*

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65

70

* See 2nd vol. of the Author's Poems, page 298, and 5th vol., pages 311

and 314, among Elegiac Pieces.-W. W. 1842.

These poems are those respectively beginning

When, to the attractions of the busy world.

I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Sweet Flower! belike one day to have.

ED.

The plant alluded to is the Moss Campion (Silene acaulis, of Linnæus). See note at the end of the volume.-W. W. 1842.

See among the "Poems on the Naming of Places," No. vi.-W. W. 1845. The note is as follows:-" Moss Campion (Silene acaulis). This most beautiful plant is scarce in England, though it is found in great abundance upon the mountains of Scotland. The first specimen I ever saw of it in its native bed was singularly fine, the tuft or cushion being at least eight inches diameter, and the root proportionably thick. I have only met with