It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free

1 It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,2 The holy time is quiet as a Nun3 Breathless with adoration; the broad sun4 Is sinking down in its tranquility;5 The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the Sea;6 Listen! the mighty Being is awake,7 And doth with his eternal motion make8 A sound like thunder—everlastingly.9 Dear child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,10 If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,11 Thy nature is not therefore less divine:12 Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year;13 And worshipp’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,14 God being with thee when we know it not.

This is a Petrarchan sonnet, occasioned by Wordsworth’s visit to Callais to see his 10 year old daughter Caroline and Annette Vallon who would have been his wife if the war had not broken out. His sister Dorothy remarked in her Journal, 1802: “We walked by the sea-shore almost every evening with Annette and Caroline, or William and I alone”.