d tranquillity and
contemplative rapture; through the power of imagination, the
beautiful and impressive aspects of nature are brought into
relationship with the spirit of him, whose fortunes and character
form the subject of the piece, and are represented as gladdening
and exalting it, whilst they keep it _pure and unspotted from the
world_. Suddenly the Poet is carried on with greater animation and
passion: he has returned to the point whence he started--flung
himself back into the tide of stirring life and moving events.
All is to come over again, struggle and conflict, chances and
changes of war, victory and triumph, overthrow and desolation. I
know nothing, in lyric poetry, more beautiful or affecting than
the final transition from this part of the ode, with its rapid
metre, to the slow elegiac stanzas at the end, when, from the
warlike fervour and eagerness, the jubilant strain which has just
been described, the Poet passes back into the sublime silence of
Nature, gathering amid her deep and quiet bosom a more subdued and
solemn tenderness than he had manifested before; it is as if from
the heights of the imaginative intellect, his spirit had retreated
into the recesses of a profoundly thoughtful Christian heart."

Professor Henry Reed said of this poem--"Had he never written another
ode, this alone would set him at the head of the lyric poets of
England."--ED.

VARIANTS:

[1] 1815.

... sorrows ... 1807.

[2] 1827.

... hath ... 1807.

[3] 1807.

... royalty. 1815.

The text of 1820 returns to that of 1807.

[4] 1845.

Though she is but a lonely Tower!
Silent, deserted of her best,
Without an Inmate or a Guest, 1807.

Deserted, emptied of her best. MS.

To vacancy and silence left;
Of all her guardian sons bereft-- 1820.

[5] 1836.

Knight, Squire, or Yeoman, Page, or Groom; 1807.

[6] 1807.

... on vale and hill: MS.

[7] 1845.

... solemn ... 1807.

[8] 1845. This line was previously three lines--

And a chearful company,
That learn'd of him submissive ways;
And comforted his private days.