Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 2.djvu/346

338 Ah! , if mine had been the Painter's hand,

To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,

The light that never was, on sea or land,

The consecration, and the Poet's dream;

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile!

Amid a world how different from this!

Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;

On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss:

Thou shouldst have seem'd a treasure-house, a mine

Of peaceful years; a chronicle of heaven:—

Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine

The very sweetest had to thee been given.

A Picture had it been of lasting ease,

Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;

No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,

Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,

Such Picture would I at that time have made:

And seen the soul of truth in every part;

A faith, a trust, that could not be betray'd.