University of Virginia Library

I have been bold enough to send you this,
Though little of the Poet's shaping art
Is in these sheets, and nothing more was sought
Than that most sweet relief which dwells in verse
To a new spirit o'er which tyrannized,
Like a musician o'er an instrument,
The sights and sounds of the majestic world.
You knew me when my fond and ignorant youth
Was an unwindowed chamber of delight,
Deaf to all noise, sweet as a rose's heart:
A sudden earthquake rent it to the base,
And through the rifts of ruin sternly gleamed
An apparition of grey windy crag,
Black leagues of forest roaring like a sea,
And far lands dim with rain. There was my world
And place for evermore. When forth I went
I took my gods with me, and set them up
Within my foreign home. What love I had,
What admiration and keen sense of joy,
Unspent in verse, has been to me a stream
Feeding the roots of being; living sap
That dwelt within the myriad boughs of life,
And kept the leaves of feeling fresh and green.
Instead of sounding in the heads of fools,
Like wind within a ruin, it became
A pious benediction and a smile
On all the goings on of human life;
An incommunicable joy in day,
In lone waste places, and the light of stars.