RPO -- William Wordsworth : It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free

1It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

2The holy time is quiet as a Nun

3Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

4Is sinking down in its tranquility;

5The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea;

6Listen! the mighty Being is awake,

7And doth with his eternal motion make

8A sound like thunder--everlastingly.

9Dear child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,

10If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,

11Thy nature is not therefore less divine:

12Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;

13And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine,

14God being with thee when we know it not.

Notes

1] The poem was written at Calais, where Wordsworth and his sister had gone to meet Annette Vallon and her child, his French daughter Caroline. "We walked by the sea-shore almost every evening with Annette and Caroline, or William and I alone" (Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal).

12] See Luke 16: 22.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: William Wordsworth, Poems in Two Volumes (1807). See The Manuscript of William Wordsworth's Poems, in Two Volumes (1807): A Facsimile (London: British Library, 1984). bib MASS (Massey College Library)
First publication date: 1807
RPO poem editor: J. R. MacGillivray
RP edition: 3RP 2.372.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/15

Composition date: August 1802
Rhyme: abbaaccadefdfe

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