[Illustration]
_How often we forget all time, when lone
Admiring Nature’s universal throne;
Her woods—her wilds—her mountains—the intense
Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!_
BYRON.
I
In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
In secret communing held—as he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:
Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
A passionate light such for his spirit was fit—
And yet that spirit knew not, in the hour
Of its own fervour, what had o’er it power.