All meek and silent, save that through a rift—­
  Not distant from the shore whereon we stood,
  A fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing-place—­
  Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams
  Innumerable, roaring with one voice! 60
  Heard over earth and sea, and, in that hour,
  For so it seemed, felt by the starry heavens.

    When into air had partially dissolved
  That vision, given to spirits of the night
  And three chance human wanderers, in calm thought 65
  Reflected, it appeared to me the type
  Of a majestic intellect, its acts
  And its possessions, what it has and craves,
  What in itself it is, and would become. 
  There I beheld the emblem of a mind 70
  That feeds upon infinity, that broods
  Over the dark abyss, [B] intent to hear
  Its voices issuing forth to silent light
  In one continuous stream; a mind sustained
  By recognitions of transcendent power, 75
  In sense conducting to ideal form,
  In soul of more than mortal privilege. 
  One function, above all, of such a mind
  Had Nature shadowed there, by putting forth,
  ’Mid circumstances awful and sublime, 80
  That mutual domination which she loves
  To exert upon the face of outward things,
  So moulded, joined, abstracted, so endowed
  With interchangeable supremacy,
  That men, least sensitive, see, hear, perceive, 85
  And cannot choose but feel.  The power, which all
  Acknowledge when thus moved, which Nature thus
  To bodily sense exhibits, is the express
  Resemblance of that glorious faculty
  That higher minds bear with them as their own. 90
  This is the very spirit in which they deal
  With the whole compass of the universe: 
  They from their native selves can send abroad
  Kindred mutations; for themselves create
  A like existence; and, whene’er it dawns 95
  Created for them, catch it, or are caught
  By its inevitable mastery,
  Like angels stopped upon the wind by sound
  Of harmony from Heaven’s remotest spheres. 
  Them the enduring and the transient both 100
  Serve to exalt; they build up greatest things
  From least suggestions; ever on the watch,
  Willing to work and to be wrought upon,
  They need not extraordinary calls
  To rouse them; in a world of life they live, 105
  By sensible impressions not enthralled,
  But by their quickening impulse made more prompt
  To hold fit converse with the spiritual world,
  And with the generations of mankind
  Spread over time, past, present, and to come, 110
  Age after age, till Time shall be no more. 
  Such minds are truly from the Deity,