It is no marvel—from my very birth

My soul was drunk with Love,—which did pervade150

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 agéd 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!