| |
| THE SUN is warm, the sky is clear, | |
| The waves are dancing fast and bright, | |
| Blue isles and snowy mountains wear | |
| The purple noon’s transparent light: | |
| The breath of the moist earth is light | 5 |
| Around its unexpanded buds; | |
| Like many a voice of one delight— | |
| The winds’, the birds’, the ocean-floods’— | |
| The City’s voice itself is soft like Solitude’s. | |
| |
| I see the Deep’s untrampled floor | 10 |
| With green and purple sea-weeds strown; | |
| I see the waves upon the shore | |
| Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown: | |
| I sit upon the sands alone; | |
| The lightning of the noon-tide ocean | 15 |
| Is flashing round me, and a tone | |
| Arises from its measured motion— | |
| How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion. | |
| |
| Alas! I have nor hope nor health, | |
| Nor peace within nor calm around, | 20 |
| Nor that Content, surpassing wealth, | |
| The sage in meditation found, | |
| And walk’d with inward glory crown’d— | |
| Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure; | |
| Others I see whom these surround— | 25 |
| Smiling they live, and call life pleasure; | |
| To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. | |
| |
| Yet now despair itself is mild | |
| Even as the winds and waters are; | |
| I could lie down like a tired child, | 30 |
| And weep away the life of care | |
| Which I have borne, and yet must bear, | |
| Till death like sleep might steal on me, | |
| And I might feel in the warm air | |
| My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea | 35 |
| Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony. | |
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