On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life, Musing in solitude, I oft perceive Fair trains of images before me rise, Accompanied by feelings of delight Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mixed.
my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion.
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride; Of him who walked in glory and in joy, Following his plough, along the mountain-side. By our own spirits we are deified; We Poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
Happier of happy though I be, like them I cannot take possession of the sky, mount with a thoughtless impulse, and wheel there, one of a mighty multitude whose way and motion is a harmony and dance magnificent.
Ah, what a warning for a thoughtless man, Could field or grove, could any spot of earth, Show to his eye an image of the pangs Which it hath witnessed,-render back an echo Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod!