I was ere Nineveh and Babylon;
I was and am, and evermore shall be,
Progressing, never reaching to the end.
A hundred years I trembled in the grass;
Under the earth in fragrant glooms I dwelt,
There in the veins and sinews of a pine
On a lone isle, where ...
... to and fro I swayed,
Drawing the sunlight from the stooping clouds.