Canto XXIII
Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,Or breaking into song by fits;Alone, alone, to where he sits,The Shadow cloak’d from head to foot
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,I wander, often falling lame,And looking back to whence I came,Or on to where the pathway leads;
And crying, How changed from where it ranThro’ lands where not a leaf was dumb;But all the lavish hills would humThe murmur of a happy Pan:
When each by turns was guide to each,And Fancy light from Fancy caught,And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought,Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech:
And all we met was fair and good,And all was good that Time could bring,And all the secret of the SpringMoved in the chambers of the blood:
And many an old philosophyOn Argive heights divinely sang,And round us all the thicket rangTo many a flute of Arcady.