This Poem would describe a calm and quiet day in October--late autumn.
No doubt, the scenery described _does not refer to Clevedon, but to some Lincolnshire wold, from which the whole range from marsh to the sea was visible_.
The stillness of the spot is just broken by the sound of the horse chestnut falling[14] through the dead leaves, and these are reddening to their own fall. No time of the year is more quiet, not even is the insect abroad: the waves just swell and fall noiselessly, and this reminds him of
"The dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep."
An ecstacy follows: in which the soul of the Poet seems to mount, like a dove rising into the heavens with a message of woe tied under her wings; and so the disembodied soul leaves its "mortal ark"--"our earthly house of this tabernacle"--(2 Cor. v., 1) and flees away
(the sea line constantly expanding and always being circular), until the ship comes in sight, when it lingers "on the marge," the edge of the sea, weeping with the piteous cry--
"Is this the end of all my care? Is this the end? Is this the end?"
Then it flies in sport about the prow of the vessel, and after this seems to
"return To where the body sits, and learn, That I have been an hour away."
The tears shed by the widower, when he wakes from a dream of his deceased wife, and "moves his doubtful arms" to find her place empty; are like the tears he himself is weeping over "a loss for ever new," a terrible void where there had been social intercourse, and a "silence" that will never be broken. For he is lamenting
"the comrade of my choice, An awful thought, a life removed, The human-hearted man I loved, A Spirit, not a breathing voice."
Hallam is now only a remembrance--no longer endowed with bodily functions, and the survivor cannot quite accept what has happened.
He therefore asks Time to teach him "many years"--for years to come--the real truth, and make him feel that these strange things, over which his tears are shed, are not merely a prolonged dream; and he begs that his fancies, hovering over the approaching ship, may quite realise that it brings no ordinary freight, but actually the mortal remains of his friend.
The difficulty in apprehending his complete loss is further shown by his address to the ship, saying, that if it had arrived in port, and he saw the passengers step across the plank to shore; and amongst them came Hallam himself, and they renewed all their former friendship; and Hallam, unchanged in every respect, heard his tale of sorrow with surprise: