"It is a beauteous evening, calm and free," is the first line of a sonnet poem by which poet?

"It is a beauteous evening, calm and free", is the first line of a sonnet poem written in August 1802 by William Wordsworth. He composed it while in Calais, France, a major ferry port in the northern part of the country. It was first published in the collection 'Poems, in Two Volumes' in 1807, appearing as the nineteenth poem in a section entitled 'Miscellaneous sonnets'.

In November 1791, Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France and became enchanted with the Republican movement. He fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who in 1792 gave birth to their daughter Caroline. One source indicates the sonnet describes his walk along the beach with his nine-year old daughter Caroline Vallon. Another source indicates that he had never seen his daughter before that visit. Wordsworth reflects that if his young daughter is seemingly unaffected by the majesty of the scene, it is because, being young, she is naturally at one with nature.

Wordsworth (1770-1856) was an English poet who helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with a joint publication produced with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) titled 'Lyrical Ballads' in 1798.

Wordsworth was a Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1843 to 1850.