UPON THE SIGHT OF A BEAUTIFUL PICTURE,
Reading edition
Painted by Sir G. H. Beaumont, Bart.
Composed 1811.—Published 1815
[This was written when we dwelt in the Parsonage at Grasmere. The principal features of the picture are Bredon Hill and Cloud Hill near Coleorton. I shall never forget the happy feeling with which my heart was filled when I was impelled to compose this Sonnet. We resided only two years in this house, and during the last half of the time, which was after this poem had been written, we lost our two children, Thomas and Catherine. Our sorrow upon these events often brought it to my mind, and cast me upon the support to which the last line of it gives expression—
"The appropriate calm of blest eternity."
It is scarcely necessary to add that we still possess the Picture.—I. F.]
Included among the "Miscellaneous Sonnets." In 1815 the title was simply Upon the Sight of a Beautiful Picture.—Ed.
Praised be the Art whose subtle power could stay Yon cloud, and fix it in that glorious shape; Nor would permit the thin smoke to escape,[A] Nor those bright sunbeams to forsake the day; Which stopped that band of travellers on their way, 5 Ere they were lost within the shady wood; And showed the Bark upon the glassy flood For ever anchored in her sheltering bay. Soul-soothing Art! whom[1] Morning, Noon-tide, Even, Do serve with all their changeful pageantry; 10 Thou, with ambition modest yet sublime, Here, for the sight of mortal man, hast given To one brief moment caught from fleeting time The appropriate calm of blest eternity,[B]
Compare the Elegiac Stanzas, suggested by a picture of Peele Castle, in a Storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont—especially the first three, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh stanzas. (See vol. iii. p. 54.)
In the letter written to Sir George Beaumont from Bootle, in 1811—partly quoted in the note to the previous poem (p. 268)—Wordsworth says, "A few days after I had enjoyed the pleasure of seeing, in different moods of mind, your Coleorton landscape from my fireside, it suggested to me the following sonnet, which—having walked out to the side of Grasmere brook, where it murmurs through the meadows near the Church—I composed immediately—
Praised be the Art ...
"The images of the smoke and the travellers are taken from your picture; the rest were added, in order to place the thought in a clear point of view, and for the sake of variety."—Ed.
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