Till the strong saplings, rank and file, stood up,
A mighty army, which o’erran the isle,
And changed the wilderness into a forest.
His love of things that are not men, that are happy and without conscience, is more instinctive than his desire for men in his solitude. They, though “kindred spirits,” never moved him to a picture like the flamingoes flying,
Till, on some lonely coast alighting,
Again their gorgeous cohort took the field.
I was not surprised, then, at the seventh canto, to find him saying, in Wordsworthian strain, that we only begin to live
From that fine point,
Which memory dwells on, with the morning star,