Within the surface of Time's fleeting river
Its wrinkled Image lies, as then it lay
Immovably unquiet, and for ever
It trembles, but it cannot pass away.
_Ode to Liberty_, vi.
also the following:
Within the surface of the fleeting river
The wrinkled image of the city lay,
Immovably unquiet, and for ever
It trembles, but it never fades away.
_Evening_.
9-10. The calm was so complete that it did not seem a transient mood of
the sea, a passing sleep.
13-16. Compare with the above original reading of 1807 (restored after
1827) the lines which Wordsworth substituted in 1820 and 1827.
Ah! THEN, if mine had been the Painter's hand,
To express what then I saw; and add a gleam,
The lustre, known to neither sea nor land,
But borrowed from the youthful Poet's dream.
35-36. A POWER IS GONE--SOUL. The reference is to the death at sea of
his brother Captain John Wordsworth. The poet can no longer see things
wholly idealized. His brother's death has revealed to him, however, the
ennobling virtue of grief. Thus a personal loss is converted into human
gain. Note especially in this connection l. 35 and ll. 53-60.