Vi

As the lone searcher, crouching o’er his glass, Beside the window while the light is high, Doth moved therein the forms of things descry Invisible else to common vision crass; Spirilla, the amœba’s sprawling mass, With gliding infusoria sailing by-- And marks each vestige with entranced eye, Glimmer, emerge and clear, dissolve and pass; So in that optic lens, where never yet The sun prevailed, beneath my prison wall, One-windowed to the past, but brightly lit By the eye’s own pure light, a swarm of small And fleeting memories, else forgotten, flit, Trivial, yet entrancing to recall.

RASTATT, 9th May