| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | XIII. Sonnet: “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free” | | By William Wordsworth (1770–1850) |
| | | 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 broods o’er the sea: | 5 |
| 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’st untouched by solemn thought, | 10 |
| Thy nature is not, therefore, less divine: | |
| Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year; | |
| And worshipp’st at the Temple’s inner shrine, | |
| God being with thee, when we know it not. 1 | |
| | | Note 1. In the same spirit Coleridge speaks of “the sacred light of Childhood.”—The Friend, London, 1818, iii. 46. [back] | | |
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