LIKE a loose island on the wide expanse, Unconscious floating on the fickle sea, Herself her all, she lives in privacy; Her waking life as lonely as a trance, Doom'd to behold the universal dance, And never hear the music which expounds The solemn step, coy slide, the merry bounds, The vague mute language of the countenance. In vain for her I smooth my antic rhyme; She cannot hear it, all her little being Concentred in her solitary seeing -- What can she know of beauteous or sublime? And yet methinks she looks so calm and good, God must be with her in her solitude. |