in,
And look to thee with undivided breast,
And foil the ingenuity of Pain.

VI.

It is no marvel--from my very birth
My soul was drunk with Love,--which did pervade 150
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth:
Of objects all inanimate I made
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers,
And rocks, whereby they grew, a Paradise,
Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dreamed uncounted hours,
Though I was chid for wandering; and the Wise
Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said
Of such materials wretched men were made,
And such a truant boy would end in woe, 160
And that the only lesson was a blow;[185]--
And then they smote me, and I did not weep,
But cursed them in my heart, and to my haunt
Returned and wept alone, and dreamed again
The visions which arise without a sleep.
And with my years my soul began to pant
With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain;
And the whole heart exhaled into One Want,
But undefined and wandering, till the day
I found the thing I sought--and that was thee; 170
And then I lost my being, all to be
Absorbed in thine;--the world was past away;--
_Thou_ didst annihilate the earth to me!

VII.

I loved all Solitude--but little thought
To spend I know not what of life, remote
From all communion with existence, save
The maniac and his tyrant;--had I been
Their fellow, many years ere this had seen
My mind like theirs corrupted to its grave.[bh]
But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave? 180
Perchance in such a cell we suffer more
Than the wrecked sailor on his desert shore;
The world is all before him--_mine_ is _here_,
Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier.
What though _he_ perish, he may lift his eye,
And with a dying glance upbraid the sky;
I will not raise my own in such reproof,
Although 'tis clouded by my dungeon roof.

VIII.

Yet do I feel at times my mind decline,[186]
But with a sense of its decay: I see 190
Unwonted lights along my prison shine,
And a strange Demon,[187] who is vexing me
With pilfering pranks and petty pains, below
The feeling of the heal