Or for the few who shall be called to look 105 On the long shadows in our evening years, Ordained precursors to the night of death. As if awakened, summoned, roused, constrained, I looked for universal things; perused The common countenance of earth and sky: 110 Earth, nowhere unembellished by some trace Of that first Paradise whence man was driven; And sky, whose beauty and bounty are expressed By the proud name she bears--the name of Heaven. I called on both to teach me what they might; 115 Or turning the mind in upon herself Pored, watched, expected, listened, spread my thoughts And spread them with a wider creeping; felt Incumbencies more awful, visitings Of the Upholder of the tranquil soul, 120 That tolerates the indignities of Time, And, from the centre of Eternity All finite motions overruling, lives In glory immutable. But peace! enough Here to record that I was mounting now 125 To such community with highest truth-- A track pursuing, not untrod before, From strict analogies by thought supplied Or consciousnesses not to be subdued. To every natural form, rock, fruit or flower, 130 Even the loose stones that cover the high-way, I gave a moral life: I saw them feel, Or linked them to some feeling: the great mass Lay bedded in a quickening soul, and all That I beheld respired with inward meaning. 135 Add that whate'er of Terror or of Love Or Beauty, Nature's daily face put on From transitory passion, unto this I was as sensitive as waters are To the sky's influence in a kindred mood 140 Of passion; was obedient as a lute That waits upon the touches of the wind. Unknown, unthought of, yet I was most rich-- I had a world about me--'twas my own; I made it, for it only lived to me, 145 And to the God who sees into the heart. Such sympathies, though rarely, were betrayed By outward gestures and by visible looks: Some called it madness--so indeed it was, If child-like fruitfulness in passing joy, 150 If steady moods of thoughtfulness matured To inspiration, sort with such a name; If prophecy be madness; if things viewed By poets in old time, and higher up By the first men, earth's first inhabitants, 155 May in these tutored days no more be seen With undisordered sight. But leaving this, It was no madness, for the bodily eye Amid my strongest workings evermore Was searching out the lines of difference 160 As they lie hid in all external forms, Near or remote, minute or vast, an eye Which from a tree, a stone, a withered leaf, To the broad ocean and the azure heavens