My body which my dungeon is,
And yet my parks and palaces: –
Which is so great that there I go
All the day long to and fro,
And when the night begins to fall
Throw down my bed and sleep, while all
The buildings hum with wakefulness –
Even as a child of savages
When evening takes her on her way,
(She having roamed a summer’s day
Along the mountain-sides and scalp)
Sleeps in an antre of that alp: –
Which is so broad and high that there,
As in the topless fields of air
My fancy soars like to a kite
And faints in the blue infinite: –
Which is so strong, my strongest throes
And the rough world’s besieging blows
Not break it, and so weak withal,
Death ebbs and flows in its loose wall
As the green sea in fishers’ nets,
And tops its topmost parapets: –
Which is so wholly mine that I
Can wield its whole artillery,
And mine so little, that my soul
Dwells in perpetual control,
And I but think and speak and do
As my dead fathers move me to: –
If this born body of my bones
The beggared soul so barely owns,
What money passed from hand to hand,
What creeping custom of the land,
What deed of author or assign,
Can make a house a thing of mine?
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