The remainder of the stanza is taken up with a most eloquent, but somewhat difficult passage, illustrating the triumph of the new Love over the old Culture. In the following stanza he makes up his mind that he “will feast his love, then depart elsewhere, that his intellect may find its share”; so the next transition, by the same mode of rapture, is to a German University. What he sees there provokes again his latent humour:—
XIV.
Alone! I am left alone once more—
(Save for the garment’s extreme fold
Abandoned still to bless my hold)
Alone, beside the entrance-door
Of a sort of temple,—perhaps a college,
—Like nothing I ever saw before
At home in England, to my knowledge.
The tall old quaint irregular town!