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Home  »  English Poetry II  »  397. By the Sea

English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

William Wordsworth

397. By the Sea


IT is a beauteous evening, calm and free;

The holy time is quiet as a nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquillity;

The gentleness of heaven is on the Sea:

Listen! the mighty being is awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make

A sound like thunder—everlastingly.

Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here,

If thou appear untouch’d by solemn thought

Thy nature is not therefore less divine:

Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year,

And worship’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.