“And I saw the figure and visage of Madness seeking for a home.”

There are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise,

And the cliff-side track looks green and fair;

I view them talking in quiet glee

As they drop down towards the puffins’ lair

By the roughest of ways;

But another with the three rides on, I see,

   Whom I like not to be there!

No: it’s not anybody you think of.  Next

A dwelling appears by a slow sweet stream

Where two sit happy and half in the dark:

They read, helped out by a frail-wick’d gleam,

Some rhythmic text;

But one sits with them whom they don’t mark,

   One I’m wishing could not be there.

No: not whom you knew and name.  And now

I discern gay diners in a mansion-place,

And the guests dropping wit—pert, prim, or choice,

And the hostess’s tender and laughing face,

And the host’s bland brow;

I cannot help hearing a hollow voice,

   And I’d fain not hear it there.

No: it’s not from the stranger you met once.  Ah,

Yet a goodlier scene than that succeeds;

People on a lawn—quite a crowd of them.  Yes,

And they chatter and ramble as fancy leads;

And they say, “Hurrah!”

To a blithe speech made; save one, mirthless,

   Who ought not to be there.

Nay: it’s not the pale Form your imagings raise,

That waits on us all at a destined time,

It is not the Fourth Figure the Furnace showed,

O that it were such a shape sublime;

In these latter days!

It is that under which best lives corrode;

   Would, would it could not be there!