LXIX.
 

I wander’d from the noisy town,
    I found a wood with thorny boughs:
    I took the thorns to bind my brows,
I wore them like a civic crown:

I met with scoffs, I met with scorns
    From youth and babe and hoary hairs:
    They call’d me in the public squares
The fool that wears a crown of thorns:

They call’d me fool, they call’d me child:
    I found an angel of the night;
    The voice was low, the look was bright;
He look’d upon my crown and smiled:

He reach’d the glory of a hand,
    That seem’d to touch it into leaf:
    The voice was not the voice of grief,
The words were hard to understand.