What words are these have fall'n from me?
      Can calm despair and wild unrest
      Be tenants of a single breast,
Or sorrow such a changeling be?

Or doth she only seem to take
      The touch of change in calm or storm;
      But knows no more of transient form
In her deep self, than some dead lake

That holds the shadow of a lark
      Hung in the shadow of a heaven?
      Or has the shock, so harshly given,
Confused me like the unhappy bark

That strikes by night a craggy shelf,
      And staggers blindly ere she sink?
      And stunn'd me from my power to think
And all my knowledge of myself;

And made me that delirious man
      Whose fancy fuses old and new,
      And flashes into false and true,
And mingles all without a plan?


Last modified 12 February 2010