He left me:  I called after him aloud;
  He heeded not; but, with his twofold charge
  Still in his grasp, before me, full in view, 135
  Went hurrying o’er the illimitable waste,
  With the fleet waters of a drowning world
  In chase of him; whereat I waked in terror,
  And saw the sea before me, and the book,
  In which I had been reading, at my side. [D] 140

    Full often, taking from the world of sleep
  This Arab phantom, which I thus beheld,
  This semi-Quixote, I to him have given
  A substance, fancied him a living man,
  A gentle dweller in the desert, crazed 145
  By love and feeling, and internal thought
  Protracted among endless solitudes;
  Have shaped him wandering upon this quest! 
  Nor have I pitied him; but rather felt
  Reverence was due to a being thus employed; 150
  And thought that, in the blind and awful lair
  Of such a madness, reason did lie couched. 
  Enow there are on earth to take in charge
  Their wives, their children, and their virgin loves,
  Or whatsoever else the heart holds dear; 155
  Enow to stir for these; yea, will I say,
  Contemplating in soberness the approach
  Of an event so dire, by signs in earth
  Or heaven made manifest, that I could share
  That maniac’s fond anxiety, and go 160
  Upon like errand.  Oftentimes at least
  Me hath such strong enhancement overcome,
  When I have held a volume in my hand,
  Poor earthly casket of immortal verse,
  Shakespeare, or Milton, labourers divine! 165

    Great and benign, indeed, must be the power
  Of living nature, which could thus so long
  Detain me from the best of other guides
  And dearest helpers, left unthanked, unpraised,
  Even in the time of lisping infancy; 170
  And later down, in prattling childhood even,
  While I was travelling back among those days,
  How could I ever play an ingrate’s part? 
  Once more should I have made those bowers resound,
  By intermingling strains of thankfulness 175
  With their own thoughtless melodies; at least
  It might have well beseemed me to repeat
  Some simply fashioned tale, to tell again,
  In slender accents of sweet verse, some tale
  That did bewitch me then, and soothes me now. 180
  O Friend!  O Poet! brother of my soul,
  Think not that I could pass along untouched
  By these remembrances.  Yet wherefore speak? 
  Why call upon a few weak words to say
  What is already written in the hearts 185
  Of all that breathe?—­what in the path of all
  Drops daily from the tongue of every child,
  Wherever man is found?  The trickling tear
  Upon the cheek of listening Infancy
  Proclaims it, and the insuperable look 190
  That drinks as if it never could be full.