But I could see them still, could feel them shrewdly in my mind's flesh; and so to the old superstition, strangely justified by my case; and so to the poem which I, with my special experience, not unnaturally consider the greatest poem ever penned.
But I did not know it then as I do now--and how the lines eluded me! I seemed to see them in the book, yet I could not read the words! "Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink." That, of course, came first (incorrectly); and it reminded me of my thirst, which the blood of the fowls had so very partially appeased.

I see now that it is lucky I could recall but little more.

Experience is less terrible than realization, and that poem makes me realize what I went through as memory cannot.

It has verses which would have driven me mad.

On the other hand, the exhaustive mental search for them distracted my thoughts until the stars were back in the sky; and now I had a new occupation, saying to myself all the poetry I could remember, especially that of the sea; for I was a bookish fellow even then.