_LINES_, Composed at GRASMERE, during a walk, one Evening, after a stormy day, the Author having just read in a Newspaper that the dissolution of MR. FOX was hourly expected. Loud is the Vale! the Voice is up With which she speaks when storms are gone, A mighty Unison of streams! Of all her Voices, One! Loud is the Vale;--this inland Depth In peace is roaring like the Sea; Yon Star upon the mountain-top Is listening quietly. Sad was I, ev'n to pain depress'd, Importunate and heavy load! 10 The Comforter hath found me here, Upon this lonely road; And many thousands now are sad, Wait the fulfilment of their fear; For He must die who is their Stay, Their Glory disappear. A Power is passing from the earth To breathless Nature's dark abyss; But when the Mighty pass away What is it more than this, 20 That Man, who is from God sent forth, Doth yet again to God return?-- Such ebb and flow must ever be, Then wherefore should we mourn? _ELEGIAC STANZAS_, Suggested by a Picture of PEELE CASTLE, in a Storm, _painted_ BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT. 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 look'd, thy Image still was there; It trembled, but it never pass'd away. How perfect was the calm! it seem'd no sleep; No mood, which season takes away, or brings: 10 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; 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: 20 Thou shouldst have seem'd a treasure-house, a mine 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 delusion of my heart, Such Picture would I at that time have made: 30 And seen the soul of truth in every part; A faith, a trust, that could not be betray'd. So once it would have been,--'tis so no more; I have submitted to a new controul: A power is gone, which nothing can restore; A deep distress hath humaniz'd my Soul.