Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.
IV. Landscape PaintingWilliam Wordsworth (17701850)
(Suggested by a picture painted by Sir George Howland Beaumont, Bart.)
P
Yon cloud, and fix it in that glorious shape;
Nor would permit the thin smoke to escape,
Nor those bright sunbeams to forsake the day;
Which stopped that band of travellers on their way,
Ere they were lost within the shady wood;
And showed the bark upon the glassy flood
Forever anchored in her sheltering bay.
Soul-soothing Art! which Morning, Noontide, Even,
Do serve with all their changeful pageantry;
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.