Apologia Pro Vita Sua[345:1]

Linenotes:

With a scorn, like your own Essay, &c., 1850.

The poet in his lone yet genial hour
Gives to his eyes a magnifying power:
Or rather he emancipates his eyes
From the black shapeless accidents of size—
In unctuous cones of kindling coal,
Or smoke upwreathing from the pipe's trim hole,
His gifted ken can see
Phantoms of sublimity.

1800.