Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/39

30 That such as you, indeed, should analyse?) Goes straight and fast as light, and high as God.

The cygnet finds the water: but the man Is born in ignorance of his element, And feels out blind at first, disorganised By sin i’ the blood,—his spirit-insight dulled And crossed by his sensations. Presently We feel it quicken in the dark sometimes; Then, mark, be reverent, be obedient,— For those dumb motions of imperfect life Are oracles of vital Deity Attesting the Hereafter. Let who says ‘The soul’s a clean white paper,’ rather say, A palimpsest, a prophets holograph Defiled, erased and covered by a monk’s,— The apocalypse, by a Longus! poring on Which obscene text, we may discern perhaps Some fair, fine trace of what was written once, Some upstroke of an alpha and omega Expressing the old scripture. Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret-room Piled high with cases in my father’s name; Piled high, packed large,—where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,