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. But I never was anything
of a scholar. It is odd therefore, that the one apposite passage
which recurred to me in its entirety was in hexameters and
pentameters

Me miserum, quanti montes volvuntur aquarum!
Jam jam tacturos sidera summa putes.
Quantae diducto subsidunt aequore valles!
Jam jam tacturas Tartara nigra putes.
Quocunque adspicio, nihil est nisi pontus et aether;
Fluctibus hic tumidis, nubibus ille minax....

More there was of it in my head; but this much was an accurate
statement of my case; and yet less so now (I was thankful to
reflect) than in the morning, when every wave was indeed a mountain,
and its trough a Tartarus. I had learnt the lines at school; nay,
they had formed my very earliest piece of Latin repetition. And how
sharply I saw the room I said them in, the man I said them to, ever
since my friend! I figured him even now hearing Ovid rep., the same
passage in the same room. And I lay saying it on a hen-coop in the