How often we forget all time, when lone
Admiring Nature's universal throne;
Her woodsher wildsher mountainsthe intense
Reply of Hers to Our intelligence! I In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
In secret communing heldas he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:
Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
A passionate light such for his spirit was fit
And yet that spirit knewnot in the hour
Of its own fervorwhat had o'er it power. II Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
To a ferver by the moonbeam that hangs o'er,
But I will half believe that wild light fraught
With more of sovereignty than ancient lore
Hath ever toldor is it of a thought
The unembodied essence, and no more
That with a quickening spell doth o'er us pass
As dew of the night-time, o'er the summer grass? III Doth o'er us pass, when, as th' expanding eye
To the loved objectso the tear to the lid
Will start, which lately slept in apathy?
And yet it need not be(that object) hid
From us in lifebut commonwhich doth lie
Each hour before usbut then only bid
With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken
T' awake us'Tis a symbol and a token IV Of what in other worlds shall beand given
In beauty by our God, to those alone
Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven
Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone,
That high tone of the spirit which hath striven
Though not with Faithwith godlinesswhose throne
With desperate energy 't hath beaten down;
Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.