| |
| .. I CANNOT 1 paint | |
| What then I was. The sounding cataract | |
| Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, | |
| The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, | |
| Their colours and their forms, were then to me | 5 |
| An appetite; a feeling and a love, | |
| That had no need of a remoter charm, | |
| By thought supplied, nor any interest | |
| Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past, | |
| And all its aching joys are now no more, | 10 |
| And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this | |
| Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts | |
| Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, | |
| Abundant recompense. For I have learned | |
| To look on nature, not as in the hour | 15 |
| Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes | |
| The still, sad music of humanity, | |
| Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power | |
| To chasten and subdue. And I have felt | |
| A presence that disturbs me with the joy | 20 |
| Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime | |
| Of something far more deeply interfused, | |
| Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, | |
| And the round ocean and the living air, | |
| And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: | 25 |
| A motion and a spirit, that impels | |
| All thinking things, all objects of all thought, | |
| And rolls through all things … | |
