It Is a Beauteous Evening by William Wordsworth
"It Is a Beauteous Evening" is a poem by William Wordsworth that captures a serene moment as the poet observes a tranquil sunset by the ocean. The evening inspires a sense of religious awe, comparable to that of a nun in deep reverence. As the poet revels in the beauty of the natural scene, he becomes aware of the ocean's powerful and thunderous sound, which suggests an underlying eternal force, akin to a divine presence. The poem features a notable shift when the poet addresses a young girl accompanying him, revealing that her experience of the moment differs from his; while she appears untouched by solemn thoughts, Wordsworth emphasizes that this does not diminish her inherent divinity.
The structure of the poem includes two significant shifts that enhance its themes. It begins with a focus on visual tranquility before transitioning to the sounds of the ocean, culminating in a reflection on the girl's spiritual essence. Wordsworth employs biblical allusions to illustrate the girl's constant connection to the divine, suggesting that worship can exist beyond overt expressions of reverence. The poem is crafted in an Italianate sonnet form, which helps to unify its contrasting elements and deepen the exploration of nature and spirituality within a beautifully depicted evening landscape.
On this Page
It Is a Beauteous Evening by William Wordsworth
First published: 1807, in Poems in Two Volumes
Type of poem: Sonnet
The Poem
In William Wordsworth’s poem “It Is a Beauteous Evening” the poet is watching the sun set over the ocean; the evening is beautiful and calm, inspiring a mood of religious awe, like “a Nun/ Breathless with adoration.” Amid the tranquility, the poet’s attention shifts, and he suddenly takes note of the sound of the waves. The noise, “like thunder,” shows that the ocean is awake. Its unceasing motion brings to the poet’s mind thoughts of eternity.
The reader first realizes that the poet is not alone as he addresses a young girl, who is walking by his side. The scene does not seem to inspire lofty, “solemn” thoughts in her, as it has done in the poet, but her nature is not “less divine” for that reason. On the contrary, she is always close to the divine: She lies “in Abraham’s bosom all the year.” God is with her, and she is worshiping even when that is not apparent to an observer.
Forms and Devices
The most striking structural feature of the sonnet are the two sudden shifts, each of which adds an important complication to the situation described in the poem’s opening lines. The first five lines emphasize the quietness and tranquility of the evening. This natural scene is given a specifically religious dimension when the time is called “holy” in line 2. The epithet blossoms into the metaphor of “a Nun/ Breathless with adoration.” The metaphor suggests a tense alertness to the presence of something higher, as opposed to a passive letting go.
The same tension appears in the next lines. The sun is “sinking down in its tranquility.” (When Wordsworth calls the sun “broad,” he refers very precisely to the well-known visual phenomenon that the sun and moon appear larger as they get close to the horizon.) Yet the heaven “broods”—actively, though gently—“o’er the Sea.” The phrase echoes John Milton’s rephrasing in Paradise Lost (1667, 1674) of Genesis 1:2, in which the “Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters” just before God creates light. There may be a slight irony to this evocation of creation just as the day is sinking into night. However, the main effect of the metaphor and the allusion in these lines is to underscore the paradoxical fusion of tranquility and alertness while also suggesting a deeper, even religious dimension to the experience of natural beauty.
Line 6 begins with an imperative “Listen!” Shifting from vision to sound and motion, the tranquil scene is paradoxically and unexpectedly loud with “A sound like thunder.” By calling the ocean “the mighty Being,” Wordsworth evokes God. The ocean “is awake,” just as God never sleeps; its waves are in “eternal motion” and make their thunder “everlastingly,” just as God is eternal. Thus, in the very tranquility of the scene, as well as in the brooding of the heaven and the motion and sound of the waves, Wordsworth suggests the presence of a higher power.
The poem suddenly shifts again in line 9, when the poet addresses the companion of his walk: “Dear Child! dear Girl!” The imperative “Listen!” in line 6 becomes retrospectively ambiguous: Is it addressed to the reader or to the girl? In lines 1-8, the poet has described the scene in language that evokes the thought of an eternal divine presence. Yet another paradox emerges: The child does not see the scene in this way. Wordsworth puts it negatively that she seems “untouched by solemn thought,” apparently feeling she needs some defense for this unawareness. Her nature, he says, “is not therefore less divine.” Presumably he does not mean to say, tactlessly, that her nature is less divine than his, but rather to imply that her nature may well be divine, even though she does not show that fact in the way he does, by sensing a higher presence in this natural scene. The child, he suggests, bears divinity within her and does not need to draw it from observing the external world.
This may explain the shift from sensory description of the scene to a biblical language used metaphorically to characterize the girl. She lies “in Abraham’s bosom” at all times (Luke 16:22; John 1:18), and she worships “at the Temple’s inner shrine” (referring to the Jerusalem Temple, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept in an inner shrine). The meaning of these phrases is made explicit in the final line: God is with the girl constantly, even “when we know it not.” The biblical phrases seem to connect with the nun in line 2, thus rounding out the religious dimension the poet is stressing.
The sonnet’s rhyme scheme is Italianate (abbaaccadefdfe), following the example of Milton. Reading Milton inspired Wordsworth to begin writing sonnets, and eventually he composed many. The first eight lines, or octave, build a strong unit of thought and feeling, in this case with two unsymmetrical components: five mainly visual lines and three lines presenting sound and motion. With the final six lines, or sestet, the thought turns in a way that qualifies the octave. Italianate sonnets usually take care not to end in a couplet, which might give the final two lines too much autonomy. Rather, the main contrast is between the octave and the sestet.