Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called the loneliest air,
Not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled in my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed around my ears?
What was the sea whose tide flowed through me there?

From my own mind that golden ointment rained
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard
I was myself the compass of that sea.

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself.
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.