Then first within the South methought I saw
  A wilderness of spires, and chrystal pile
  Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,
  Illimitable range of battlement
  On battlement, and the Imperial height
  Of Canopy o’ercanopied. 
                              Behind,
  In diamond light, upsprung the dazzling Cones
  Of Pyramids, as far surpassing Earth’s
  As Heaven than Earth is fairer.  Each aloft
  Upon his renown’d Eminence bore globes
  Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances
  Of either, showering circular abyss
  Of radiance.  But the glory of the place
  Stood out a pillar’d front of burnish’d gold
  Interminably high, if gold it were
  Or metal more ethereal, and beneath
  Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze
  Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan
  Through length of porch and lake and boundless
      hall,
  Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom
  The snowy skirting of a garment hung,
  And glimpse of multitudes of multitudes
  That minister’d around it—­if I saw
  These things distinctly, for my human brain
  Stagger’d beneath the vision, and thick night
  Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.

  With ministering hand he rais’d me up;
  Then with a mournful and ineffable smile,
  Which but to look on for a moment fill’d
  My eyes with irresistible sweet tears,
  In accents of majestic melody,
  Like a swol’n river’s gushings in still night
  Mingled with floating music, thus he spake: 
  ’There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway
  The heart of man:  and teach him to attain
  By shadowing forth the Unattainable;
  And step by step to scale that mighty stair
  Whose landing-place is wrapt about with clouds
  Of glory of Heaven.[B] With earliest Light of Spring,
  And in the glow of sallow Summertide,
  And in red Autumn when the winds are wild
  With gambols, and when full-voiced Winter roofs
  The headland with inviolate white snow,
  I play about his heart a thousand ways,
  Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears
  With harmonies of wind and wave and wood
  —­Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters
  Betraying the close kisses of the wind—­
  And win him unto me:  and few there be
  So gross of heart who have not felt and known
  A higher than they see:  They with dim eyes
  Behold me darkling.  Lo!  I have given thee
  To understand my presence, and to feel
  My fullness; I have fill’d thy lips with power. 
  I have rais’d thee higher to the Spheres of Heaven,
  Man’s first, last home:  and thou with ravish’d sense
  Listenest the lordly music flowing from
  Th’ illimitable years.  I am the Spirit,
  The permeating life which courseth through
  All th’ intricate and labyrinthine veins
  Of the great vine of Fable, which, outspread