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LINES 23-29 These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; Line 23 begins after the pause of a stanza break, but also after a kind of caesuramid-line. Since the last line of the first stanza ends halfway through its expected iambic pentameter (it contains only three iambic feet instead of five), the poem suggests that the line is “completed” in what is actually the next line, and the opening of stanza 2—line 23, which contains two iambs (two da-DUMs) and so completes the pentameter. See how, placed together, they essential create one line of iambic pentameter (with "beauteous" scanned as having two syllables): The Hermit sits alone. These beauteous forms, The break in the middle of line 22 dramatizes and lengthens the pause between the two stanzas. At the same time, however, since the reader can implicitly read line 23 as continuing and completing line 22, the two stanzas feel like part of a single, unified, and ongoing thought or utterance. The tension between these two effects—between the implied pause and then continuation of the line—could reflect a brief shift in the speaker’s thoughts, as he continues to speak but changes his focus and, to some degree, his rhetorical approach. Here, rather than simply being in the present and recording what he sees and imagines, the speaker recalls how remembering this landscape helped him in the past, during his time away. The speaker begins the stanza by describing the aspects of the landscape he has just recounted as “beauteous forms.” The word “forms” suggests the shapes and impressions of the setting, but it is also an allusion to Platonic forms. These were considered to be the most essential and ideal versions of things encountered in everyday life. This allusion suggests that in encountering this natural place the speaker has encountered something more ideal, pure, and true than what he might see in his daily life. The speaker develops this idea as he describes his time spent away from this natural place as “lonely” and “’mid the din,” or noise, of “towns and cities.” The noisiness of these urban settings contrasts strongly with the quiet of the current scene, while “lonely” contrasts interestingly with the descriptions of “seclusion” in the natural world—with "seclusion" suggesting a kind of solitude that is isolated but not unpleasant, unlike loneliness. Even while living within the urban world, the speaker suggests he could remember nature vividly (he was not “blind” to it) and that these memories helped him to feel better, bringing him “sensations sweet / Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.” The sibilance of “sensations sweet” recalls that heard earlier in the poem with the “secluded scene” and the “silence” of the “smoke,” suggesting that even while away, the speaker, in recalling the landscape, could access some fundamental quality of it. Meanwhile, the repetition of “felt” and the parallel syntax of the two clauses (“Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart”) emphasizes that the speaker could feel this natural place in his body, even when he wasn’t physically there. The pulse of these lines suggests the pulse of blood moving from the heart and giving life to every part of the body.