So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch'd me from the past,
And all at once it seem'd at last
The living soul was flash'd on mine,


And mine in his was wound, and whirl'd
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,


Æonian music measuring out
The steps of Time—the shocks of Chance--
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt.

Alfred Tennyson