Ye know, O saints of heaven, what I have borne
  Of discipline and scourge; the twisted lash
  Of knotted rope that striped my shrinking limbs;
  Vigils and fasts protracted, till my flesh
  Wasted and crumbled from mine aching bones,
  And the last skin, one woof of pain and sores,
  Thereto like yellow parchment loosely clung;
  Exposure to the fever and the frost,
  When ’mongst the hollows of the hills I lurked
  From persecution of misguided folk,
  Accustoming my spirit to ignore
  The burden of the cross, while picturing
  The bliss of disembodied souls, the grace
  Of holiness, the lives of sainted men,
  And entertaining all exalted thoughts,
  That nowise touched the trouble of the hour,
  Until the grief and pain seemed far less real
  Than the creations of my brain inspired. 
  The vision, the beatitude, were true: 
  The agony was but an evil dream. 
  I speak not now as one who hath not learned
  The purport of those lightly-bandied words,
  Evil and Fate, but rather one who knows
  The thunders of the terrors of the world. 
  No mortal chance or change, no earthly shock,
  Can move or reach my soul, securely throned
  On heights of contemplation and calm prayer,
  Happy, serene, no less with actual joy
  Of present peace than faith in joys to come.

    This soft, sweet, yellow evening, how the trees
  Stand crisp against the clear, bright-colored sky! 
  How the white mountain-tops distinctly shine,
  Taking and giving radiance, and the slopes
  Are purpled with rich floods of peach-hued light! 
  Thank God, my filmy, old dislustred eyes
  Find the same sense of exquisite delight,
  My heart vibrates to the same touch of joy
  In scenes like this, as when my pulse danced high,
  And youth coursed through my veins!  This the one link
  That binds the wan old man that now I am
  To the wild lad who followed up the hounds
  Among Ravenna’s pine-woods by the sea. 
  For there how oft would I lose all delight
  In the pursuit, the triumph or the game,
  To stray alone among the shadowy glades,
  And gaze, as one who is not satisfied
  With gazing, at the large, bright, breathing sea,
  The forest glooms, and shifting gleams between
  The fine dark fringes of the fadeless trees,
  On gold-green turf, sweetbrier and wild pink rose! 
  How rich that buoyant air with changing scent
  Of pungent pine, fresh flowers and salt cool seas! 
  And when all echoes of the chase had died,
  Of horn and halloo, bells and baying hounds,
  How mine ears drank the ripple of the tide
  On that fair shore, the chirp of unseen birds,
  The rustling of the tangled undergrowth,
  And the deep lyric murmur of the pines,
  When through their high tops swept the sudden breeze! 
  There was my world, there would my heart