"
And then follows the much quoted, profoundly touching, deeply significant
stanza to which we have referred:--
"There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.
But now afflictions how me down to earth:
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth,
But O! each visitation
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural Man--
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my Soul."
Sadder lines than these were never perhaps written by any poet in
description of his own feelings. And what gives them their peculiar
sadness--as also, of course, their special biographical value--is that
they are not, like Shelley's similarly entitled stanzas, the mere
expression of a passing mood.
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