[BNP/E3, 77 – 53-55]

The Old Castle

1. An Invocation to Man

a) How great and how small.

b) How suffering and sad.

2. This old Castle the haunt of men who suffered. Story of its inmates.

__________

‘Tis the middle of summer, muddy calm

Silence is on the {…} Lusian land

A silence not the child of loveliness

But the mute child of peace for loneliness

Is not peace, but silent sufferance[1] of war.

Or its abeyance e’er it break again[2]

Earth’s silence when the storm is over her

Or silence ever to storm {…} to,

Beneath the calm face the wild heart with fear

May make it calm,[3] or the heart may be dead

[53^v]

_______

But now it is a silence all of peace

Simple as a daisy and as tender and sweet

As the soft song of childhood, wonderous tales

Fantastic breathing for a fairy land.

Oh let us visit the old castle there

The old and void castle on the hill

Which seems more old than memory[4] ever, to-day

Even at this hour is the vertical light.

Where all is green and golden it is old

Even as the heart that loved and can but pine

The soul that but senseless, the born beast

That looks in life without eyes that would forget it

These thoughts made me not kind to the green trees

Nor to the silence at the heart of sounds

Quiet and of a solemn tenderness

Such is the {…} of mid-day can produce

In the warm sunlight of the Lusian land.

[54^r]

                     As we went

Up the steep hill by a secluded road,

A footpath leading from the world away,

The thought of how it led away and away

From the crust world, away from glance and look

Away e’en from the genial clasp of hands

Took me with pleasure, for I lay to dream

In lands that are all dreams, stricken at heart

(Fantastic lands!) With the disease of dreams,

Seeing but being not, coming and going

But leaving in the heart a wound[5] not fancied.

Lands I have dreamt on: cavern with isles

And Vegetations, Desolates, Lands

Where a perpetual sunset makes all art

A picture, all of Nature Deathless worms

Eternal eves, perennial nights; Strange shores

Branch of sweet rivers where for e’er a boat

Rests and so rests through the decay and death

Of thoughts of mine whose beat will not rest.

‘Tis for this reason that a picture will

Sometimes with sadness beyond human {…}

Plunge my soul into tears when it depicts

A scene in deep ideal beating wrapt

A melancholy scene and one appearing

[54^v]

The {…}

Then my soul pines for that reality

It is a thing that best makes eternal

For time and unremainingness and death

Though they have power upon the spirit’s looks

Yet on this spirits thinkings have no power

These thoughts within my soul the mid-day made

Yet by itself defected its own thoughts

For as I looked on it thought it appalled

The dim ideal {…} of my dreams

Ay, it appalled them, ever as the things

That are imperfect and perfect never

As a great greatness never ungreat.

Oh how imperfect were these leaves, these trees

That imperfect were!

[55^r]

In this art is the nature |*worn|

Nature is a thought, I guess, it is a thought

But art is the thought ever of a thought

‘Tis more than nature, more than everything.

_______

All numbers equally are far from infinite.

_______

Ay, so imperfect all! These trees, this light

These shadows and these groves, the nature’s fear

So firm below that it was silence

A picture hangs within my room

A picture of no value, small and old

And it contains an isle upon a lake

A little boat and on the whole there is

[55^r]

A moonlight of so sweet and sad a tone

That I pine for it, wandering {…}

[1] sufferance ^/fear\

[2] Or its abeyance e’er it break again ^{/the calm hush when war strikes terror /hush when war makes terror\.\}

[3] May make it calm, ^{/That made it freed and calm.\}

[4] memory ^/memory\

[5] wound ^{/real wound\}