My Son! behold the tide already spent That rose, and steadily advanced to fill The shores and channels, working Nature’s will Among the mazy streams that backward went, And in the sluggish Ports where ships were pent. 5 And now, its task performed, the flood stands still At the green base of many an inland hill, In placid beauty and entire content. Such the repose that Sage and Hero find, Such measured rest the diligent and good 10 Of humbler name, whose souls do like the flood Of ocean press right on, or gently wind, Neither to be diverted nor withstood Until they reach the bounds by Heaven assigned. 1820 AUTHOR’S VOYAGE DOWN THE RHINE (THIRTY YEARS AGO) The confidence of Youth our only Art, And Hope gay Pilot of the bold design, We saw the living Landscapes of the Rhine, Reach after reach, salute us and depart; Slow sink the Spires,--and up again they start! 5 But who shall count the Towers as they recline O’er the dark steeps, or in the horizon line Striding, with shattered crests, the eye athwart? More touching still, more perfect was the pleasure, When hurrying forward till the slack’ning stream 10 Spread like a spacious Mere, we there could measure A smooth free course along the watery gleam, Think calmly on the past, and mark at leisure Features which else had vanished like a dream. This sonnet was published in the first edition of the Memorials of this Tour (1822), but was struck out of the next edition, and never republished. Its rejection by Wordsworth is curious. It refers to the pedestrian tour which the Poet took, with his friend Jones, in 1790, which he afterwards recorded in full in his _Descriptive Sketches_. Dorothy Wordsworth, in her Journal of the Tour in 1820, refers to it thus:--“Our journey through the narrower and most romantic passages of the Vale of the Rhine was connected with times long past, when my brother and his Friend (it was thirty years ago) floated down the stream in their little Bark. Often did my fancy place them with a freight of happiness in the centre of some bending reach, overlooked by tower or castle, or (when expectation would be most eager) at the turning of a promontory, which had concealed from their view some delicious winding which we had left behind; but no more of my own feelings, a record of his will be more interesting.” She then quotes the sonnet, beginning The confidence of Youth our only Art.