More frequently from the same source I drew A pleasure quiet and profound, a sense Of permanent and universal sway, And paramount belief; there, recognised A type, for finite natures, of the one Supreme Existence, the surpassing life Which—to the boundaries of space and time, Of melancholy space and doleful time, Superior and incapable of change, Nor touched by welterings of passion—is, And hath the name of, God. Transcendent peace And silence did await upon these thoughts That were a frequent comfort to my youth. 'Tis told by one whom stormy waters threw, With fellow-sufferers by the shipwreck spared, Upon a desert coast, that having brought To land a single volume, saved by chance, A treatise of Geometry, he wont, Although of food and clothing destitute, And beyond common wretchedness depressed, To part from company and take this book (Then first a self-taught pupil in its truths) To spots remote, and draw his diagrams With a long staff upon the sand, and thus Did oft beguile his sorrow, and almost Forget his feeling: so (if like effect From the same cause produced, 'mid outward things So different, may rightly be compared), So was it then with me, and so will be With Poets ever. Mighty is the charm Of those abstractions to a mind beset With images and haunted by herself, And specially delightful unto me Was that clear synthesis built up aloft So gracefully; even then when it appeared Not more than a mere plaything, or a toy To sense embodied: not the thing it is In verity, an independent world, Created out of pure intelligence.