CLXXVII.

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,[543] With one fair Spirit for my minister, That I might all forget the human race, And, hating no one, love but only her! Ye elements!--in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted--Can ye not Accord me such a Being? Do I err In deeming such inhabit many a spot? Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

CLXXVIII.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and Music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe,[544] and feel What I can ne'er express--yet can not all conceal.