Poem by William Wordsworth

Upon the Sight of a Beautiful Picture Painted by Sir G. H. Beaumont, Bart

PRAISED be the Art whose subtle power could stay
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
For ever anchored in her sheltering bay.
Soul-soothing Art! whom 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.

1. On the Final Submission of the Tyrolese
2. The Vaudois
3. Stanzas Written in My Pocket Copy of Thomson’s “Castle of Indolence”
4. Resolution and Independence
5. To B. R. Haydon

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