At length He paused and looked at me, and waited till My foot had touched the cord he dragged, and then Bounded away, scaling the shelvy cliffs That bolder rose along the narrow path. He had no choice but mount. I pressed him close, And rocks and chasms were thick on either side; So, pausing oft, but ever leaping on Before my hand could reach him, he advanced. Not once in all the passage had I paused To look below, nor had I thought of her Whom I had left. Absorbed in the pursuit I pressed it recklessly, until I grasped My fleecy prisoner, wound and tied his cord Around my wrist, and both of us sank down Upon the mountain summit. In a swoon Of breathless weariness how long I lay I could not know; but consciousness at last Came by my brute companion, who, alert Among the scanty browse, tugged at my wrist, And brought me startled to my feet. I saw In one swift sweep of vision where I stood,-- In presence of what beauty of the earth, What glory of the sky, what majesty Of lofty loneliness. I drew the lamb-- The dear, dumb creature--gently to my side, And led him out upon the beetling cliff That fronts the plaided meadows, and knelt down. When once the shrinking, dizzy spell was gone, I saw below me, like a jewelled cup, The valley hollowed to its heaven-kissed lip-- The serrate green against the serrate blue-- Brimming with beauty's essence; palpitant With a divine elixir--lucent floods Poured from the golden chalice of the sun, At which my spirit drank with conscious growth, And drank again with still expanding scope Of comprehension and of faculty. I felt the bud of being in me burst With full, unfolding petals to a rose, And fragrant breath that flooded all the scene. By sudden insight of myself I knew That I was greater than the scene,--that deep Within my nature was a wondrous world, Broader than that I gazed on, and informed With a diviner beauty,--that the things I saw were but the types of those I held, And that above them both, High Priest and King, I stood supreme, to choose and to combine, And build from that within me and without New forms of life, with meaning of my own. And there alone, upon the mountain-top, Kneeling beside the lamb, I bowed my head Beneath the chrismal light, and felt my soul Baptized and set apart to poetry.