Rapt though He were above the power of sense, Familiarly, yet out of the cleansed heart 50 Of that once sinful Being overflowed On sun, moon, stars, the nether elements, And every shape of creature they sustain, Divine affections; and with beast and bird (Stilled from afar--such marvel story tells-- 55 By casual outbreak of his passionate words, And from their own pursuits in field or grove Drawn to his side by look or act of love Humane, and virtue of his innocent life) He wont to hold companionship so free, 60 So pure, so fraught with knowledge and delight, As to be likened in his Followers’ minds To that which our first Parents, ere the fall From their high state darkened the Earth with fear, Held with all Kinds in Eden’s blissful bowers. 65 Then question not that, ’mid the austere Band, Who breathe the air he breathed, tread where he trod, Some true Partakers of his loving spirit Do still survive,[137] and, with those gentle hearts Consorted, Others, in the power, the faith, 70 Of a baptized imagination, prompt To catch from Nature’s humblest monitors Whate’er they bring of impulses sublime. Thus sensitive must be the Monk, though pale With fasts, with vigils worn, depressed by years, 75 Whom in a sunny glade I chanced to see, Upon a pine-tree’s storm-uprooted trunk, Seated alone, with forehead sky-ward raised, Hands clasped above the crucifix he wore Appended to his bosom, and lips closed 80 By the joint pressure of his musing mood And habit of his vow. That ancient Man-- Nor haply less the Brother whom I marked, As we approached the Convent gate, aloft Looking far forth from his aerial cell, 85 A young Ascetic--Poet, Hero, Sage, He might have been, Lover belike he was-- If they received into a conscious ear The notes whose first faint greeting startled me, Whose sedulous iteration thrilled with joy 90 My heart--may have been moved like me to think, Ah! not like me who walk in the world’s ways, On the great Prophet, styled _the Voice of One_ _Crying amid the wilderness_, and given, Now that their snows must melt, their herbs and flowers 95 Revive, their obstinate winter pass away, That awful name to Thee, thee, simple Cuckoo, Wandering in solitude, and evermore Foretelling and proclaiming, ere thou leave This thy last haunt beneath Italian skies 100 To carry thy glad tidings over heights Still loftier, and to climes more near the Pole.