Serenity.

Turner, Sketchbooks, n/d

Like a curtain slowly drawn

It stops suddenly half open,

Or, like grief itself, filled with gentle hope,

It becomes lighter in the shore-less dark,

Thus the moon barely wanes

Winding her way above the storm-tossed sea.

Stand upon this hill and behold endlessly

This scene of a formidable sea,

And it will seem to thee a waking dream.

That secret mind flowing in thee

Which even the day cannot scatter,

The serenity of thinking and the beating of the heart

Will enchain thee in this vision;

This golden-silver moon

Standing lonely over the sea,

All curtain the grief of even the hopeless.

And it appears that through the tempest

Moves a light caressing wind,

While the sea swells up with a roar,

Sometimes, like a battlefield it looks to me

The tempestuous sea,

Where the moon itself is a brilliant golden crown

Of a great king.

But even that moon is always beneath thee

Oh Master most high,

Oh forgive thou me

If even this master was frightened for a moment

Oh, noble moment, by art betrayed…

And how may one not delight in thee,

Oh thou young boy, but forgive thou me,

If I shall bend my white head

Before thy art divine

Thy bliss-wrought genius.

J.M.W. Turner