Beings for whom the universe was made, Yet none of kindred with myself. In vain I strove to waken sympathy in breasts Cold as the element in which they moved, And inaccessible to fellowship With me, as sun and stars, as winds and vapours.
Relics huge and strange Of the old world that perish’d by the flood, Kept under chains of darkness till the judgment.
He watched the making of a coral islet, compared with which men’s work seemed nothing. A comparison which set him thinking of the grandeurs of earth, among them of Babylon, built for eternity, though where it stood,
Ruin itself stands still for lack of work, And Desolation keeps unbroken Sabbath....
He saw the islet grow and become hospitable. The sea-wrack and many sea-changed things were swept up on to it,
While heaven’s dew Fell on the sterile wilderness as sweetly As though it were the garden of the Lord.
Grass grew. Insects swarmed. He witnessed “the age of gold in that green isle.” Trees and flowers rose up. Reptiles and amphibious monsters appeared. Then came “more admirable” beings:--
Flocking from every point of heaven, and filling Eye, ear, and mind with objects, sounds, emotions Akin to livelier sympathy and love Than reptiles, fishes, insects could inspire; --Birds, the free tenants of land, air, and ocean, Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace; In plumage, delicate and beautiful, Thick without burthen, close as fishes’ scales, Or loose as full-blown poppies to the breeze; With wings that might have had a soul within them, They bore their owners by such sweet enchantment; Birds, small and great, of endless shapes and colours, Here flew and perched, there swam and dived at pleasure; Watchful and agile, uttering voices wild And harsh, yet in accordance with the waves Upon the beach, the winds in caverns moaning, Or winds and waves abroad upon the water.
His was an eager, rapturous temperament. Next to birds he seems to have loved the insect legions--“children of light and air and fire” he calls them,
Their lives all ecstasy and quick cross motion.
But birds and insects did not confine his sympathy. They did not, e.g., turn it aside from the elephant, leading his quiet life “among his old contemporary trees.”