There, ended childhood: what succeeded next I recollect as, after fevers, men Thread back the passage of delirium, Missing the turn still, baffled by the door; Smooth endless days, notched here and there with knives; A weary, wormy darkness, spurred i’ the flank With flame, that it should eat and end itself Like some tormented scorpion. Then, at last, I do remember clearly, how there came A stranger with authority, not right, (I thought not) who commanded, caught me up From old Assunta’s neck; how, with a shriek, She let me go,—while I, with ears too full Of my father’s silence, to shriek back a word, In all a child’s astonishment at grief Stared at the wharfage where she stood and moaned, My poor Assunta, where she stood and moaned! The white walls, the blue hills, my Italy, Drawn backward from the shuddering steamer-deck, Like one in anger drawing back her skirts Which suppliants catch at. Then the bitter sea Inexorably pushed between us both, And sweeping up the ship with my despair Threw us out as a pasture to the stars. Ten nights and days we voyaged on the deep; Ten nights and days, without the common face Of any day or night; the moon and sun Cut off from the green reconciling earth, To starve into a blind ferocity And glare unnatural; the very sky (Dropping its bell-net down upon the sea As if no human heart should scape alive,) Bedraggled with the desolating salt, Until it seemed no more that holy heaven To which my father went. All new, and strange— The universe turned stranger, for a child. Then, land!—then, England! oh, the frosty cliffs Looked cold upon me. Could I find a home Among those mean red houses through the fog? And when I heard my father’s language first From alien lips which had no kiss for mine, I wept aloud, then laughed, then wept, then wept,— And some one near me said the child was mad Through much sea-sickness. The train swept us on. Was this my father’s England? the great isle? The ground seemed cut up from the fellowship Of verdure, field from field, as man from man; The skies themselves looked low and positive, As almost you could touch them with a hand, And dared to do it, they were so far off From God’s celestial crystals; all things, blurred And dull and vague. Did Shakspeare and his mates Absorb the light here?—not a hill or stone With heart to strike a radiant colour up Or active outline on the indifferent air!