Dreams

O for that sweet, untroubled rest
That poets oft have sung!--
The babe upon its mother's breast,
The bird upon its young,
The heart asleep without a pain--
When shall I know that sleep again?

When shall I be as I have been
Upon my mother's breast--
Sweet Nature's garb of verdant green
To woo to perfect rest--
Love in the meadow, field, and glen,
And in my native wilds again?

The sheep within the fallow field,
The herd upon the green,
The larks that in the thistle shield,
And pipe from morn to e'en--
O for the pasture, fields, and fen!
When shall I see such rest again?

I love the weeds along the fen,
More sweet than garden flowers,
For freedom haunts the humble glen
That blest my happiest hours.
Here prison injure...

Sleep is a spirit, who beside us sits,
Or through our frames like some dim glamour flits;
From out her form a pearly light is shed,
As from a lily, in a lily-bed,
A firefly's gleam. Her face is pale as stone,
And languid as a cloud that drifts alone
In starry heav'n. And her diaphanous feet
Are easy as the dew or opaline heat
Of summer.

Lo! with ears aurora pink
As Dawn's she leans and listens on the brink
Of being, dark with dreadfulness and doubt,
Wherein vague lights and shadows move about,
And palpitations beat like some huge heart
Of Earth the surging pulse of which we're part.

One hand, that hollows her divining eyes,
Glows like the curved moon over twilight skies;
And with her gaze she fathoms life and death
Gulfs, where man's cons...

The curtain rose; in thunders long and loud
The galleries rung; the veteran actor bowed.
In flaming line the telltales of the stage
Showed on his brow the autograph of age;
Pale, hueless waves amid his clustered hair,
And umbered shadows, prints of toil and care;
Round the wide circle glanced his vacant eye, -
He strove to speak, - his voice was but a sigh.

Year after year had seen its short-lived race
Flit past the scenes and others take their place;
Yet the old prompter watched his accents still,
His name still flaunted on the evening's bill.
Heroes, the monarchs of the scenic floor,
Had died in earnest and were heard no more;
Beauties, whose cheeks such roseate bloom o'er-spread
They faced the footlights in unborrowed red,
Had faded slowly through suc...

1.
I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

2.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxslips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets -
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth -
Its mother's face with Heaven's collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

3.
And in th...

Spellbound by a sweet fantasy
At evenglow I stand
Beside an opaline strange sea
That rings a sunset land.

The rich lights fade out one by one,
And, like a peony
Drowning in wine, the crimson sun
Sinks down in that strange sea.

His wake across the ocean-floor
In a long glory lies,
Like a gold wave-way to the shore
Of some sea paradise.

My dream flies after him, and I
Am in another land;
The sun sets in another sky,
And we sit hand in hand.

Gray eyes look into mine; such eyes
I think the angel’s are,
Soft as the soft light in the skies
When shines the morning star,

And tremulous as morn, when thin
Gold lights begin to glow,
Revealing the bright soul within
As dawn the sun below.

So, hand...

By many a dream of God and man my thoughts in shining flocks were led:
But as I went through Patrick Street the hopes and prophecies were dead.
The hopes and prophecies were dead: they could not blossom where the feet
Walked amid rottenness, or where the brawling shouters stamped the street.
Where was the beauty that the Lord gave man when first he towered in pride?
But one came by me at whose word the bitter condemnation died.
His brows were crowned with thorns of light: his eyes were bright as one who sees
The starry palaces shine o'er the sparkle of the heavenly seas.
'Is it not beautiful?' he cried. Our Faery Land of Hearts' Desire
Is mingled through the mire and mist, yet stainless keeps its lovely fire.
The pearly phantoms with blown hair are dancing where the drunkards reel:
Th...

In my dream last night it seemed I stood
With a boy's glad heart in my boyhood's wood.

The beryl green and the cairngorm brown
Of the day through the deep leaves sifted down.

The rippling drip of a passing shower
Rinsed wild aroma from herb and flower.

The splash and urge of a waterfall
Spread stairwayed rocks with a crystal caul.

And I waded the pool where the gravel gray,
And the last year's leaf, like a topaz lay.

And searched the strip of the creek's dry bed
For the colored keel and the arrow-head.

And I found the cohosh coigne the same,
Tossing with torches of pearly flame.

The owlet dingle of vine and brier,
That the butterfly-weed flecked fierce with fire.

The elder edge with its warm perfume,
And the...

TO MARGOT


When I go free,
I think 'twill be
A night of stars and snow,
And the wild fires of frost shall light
My footsteps as I go;
Nobody - nobody will be there
With groping touch, or sight,
To see me in my bush of hair
Dance burning through the night.




VOICES


Who is it calling by the darkened river
    Where the moss lies smooth and deep,
And the dark trees lean unmoving arms,
    Silent and vague in sleep,
And the bright-heeled constellations pass
    In splendour through the gloom;
Who is it calling o'er the darkened river
        In music, "Come!"?

Who is it wandering in the summer meadows
    Where the children stoop and play
In the green faint-scented flowers, spinning
 ...

Fragment of a Dream.--The great Painters supposed to be Magicians.--The Beginnings of the Art.--Gildings on the Glories and Draperies.-- Improvements under Giotto, etc.--The first Dawn of the true Style in Masaccio.--Studied by all the great Artists who followed him.--Leonardo da Vinci, with whom commenced the Golden Age of Painting.--His Knowledge of Mathematics and of Music.--His female heads all like each other.-- Triangular Faces.--Portraits of Mona Lisa, etc.--Picture of Vanity and Modesty.--His chef-d'oeuvre, the Last Supper.--Faded and almost effaced.


Filled with the wonders I had seen
    In Rome's stupendous shrines and halls,
I felt the veil of sleep serene
Come o'er the memory of each scene,
    As twilight o'er the landscape falls.
Nor was it slumber, sound and deep,

I looked, and the mist had hidden
    Streamlet and gorge and mountain,
Mansion and church had vanished away,
    No trace of tree or fountain.
Mist, on the roof where birdlings wake
    The strains of old love stories,
Mist, like tears on the roses' cheek,
    In cups of the morning glories.


"Ah, like life, 'said my heart to me,'
    Only a world of sorrow,
The lips you love, the hands you clasp,
    Are cold and strange to-morrow.
Mists on the stream of by-gone days,
    Where are your childhood bowers?
Mists on the path of coming years.
    Where are your household flowers?"

I looked again; a sunbeam bright
    Had shot through the heavy mist;
It drew the rose to its glowing breast,
    And the morning glories kissed.
T...

        Now would I be in that removèd place
        Where the dim sunlight hardly comes at all
        And branches of the young trees interlace
        And long swathes of the brambles twine and fall;
        A space between the hedgerow and a road
        Not trod by foot of any known to me,
        Where now and then a cart with scented load
    Goes sleepy down the lane with creaking axle-tree.

        And there I'd lie upon the tumbled leaves,
        Watching a square of the all else hidden sky,
        And made such songs a drowsy mind believes
        To be most perfect music.    So would I
    Keep my face heavenwards and bless eternity,
        Wherein my heart could be as glad as this
        And lazily I'd bid all men come hither
        And in m...

    Do you know what I will love best of all
    To do when I'm old? At the close of day
    When the dusk comes down and the shadows play,
    And the wind sings loud in the poplars tall,
    I will love to get into my corner here -
    The curtains drawn, and never a one
    To break the stillness - to sit here alone
    And dream of these good old times, my dear.

    In fancy you'll come and sit by my side -
    I can see your face with my eyes close shut,
    With the pride and the softness clearly cut,
    The obstinate chin and the forehead wide,
    The oval cheek and the smile so warm,
    The dark eyes full of their fun and power,
    With the tender light for the tender hour,
    And the flash of fire that was half their charm.

    I'll w...

Bright be thy dreams--may all thy weeping
Turn into smiles while thou art sleeping.
    May those by death or seas removed,
The friends, who in thy springtime knew thee,
    All thou hast ever prized or loved,
In dreams come smiling to thee!

There may the child, whose love lay deepest,
Dearest of all, come while thou sleepest;
    Still as she was--no charm forgot--
No lustre lost that life had given;
    Or, if changed, but changed to what
Thou'lt find her yet in Heaven!

Far in the east the rain-clouds sweep and harry,
Down the long haggard hills, formless and low,
Far in the west the shell-tints meet and marry,
Piled gray and tender blue and roseate snow;
East - like a fiend, the bolt-breasted, streaming
Storm strikes the world with lightning and with hail;
West - like the thought of a seraph that is dreaming,
Venus leads the young moon down the vale.

Through the lake furrow between the gloom and bright'ning
Firm runs our long canoe with a whistling rush,
While Potàn the wise and the cunning Silver Lightning
Break with their slender blades the long clear hush;
Soon shall I pitch my tent amid the birches,
Wise Potàn shall gather boughs of balsam fir,
While for bark and dry wood Silver Lightning searches;
Soon the smoke shall ...

In her dark eyes dreams poetize;
The soul sits lost in love:
There is no thing in all the skies,
To gladden all the world I prize,
Like the deep love in her dark eyes,
Or one sweet dream thereof.

In her dark eyes, where thoughts arise,
Her soul's soft moods I see:
Of hope and faith, that make life wise;
And charity, whose food is sighs
Not truer than her own true eyes
Is truth's divinity.

In her dark eyes the knowledge lies
Of an immortal sod,
Her soul once trod in angel-guise,
Nor can forget its heavenly ties,
Since, there in Heaven, upon her eyes
Once gazed the eyes of God.

    "I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty;
    I woke, and found that life was duty.
    Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
    Toil on, sad heart, courageously,
    And thou shall find thy dream to be
    A noonday light and truth to thee."

        Ad harmoniam canere mundum.
        CICERO "de Nat. Deor." lib. iii.


    There lies a shell beneath the waves,
    In many a hollow winding wreathed,
            Such as of old
Echoed the breath that warbling sea-maids breathed;
            This magic shell,
    From the white bosom of a syren fell,
As once she wandered by the tide that laves
            Sicilia's sands of gold.
                It bears
    Upon its shining side the mystic notes
        Of those entrancing airs,[1]
    The genii of the deep were wont to swell,
When heaven's eternal orbs their midnight music rolled!
    Oh! seek it, wheresoe'er it floats;
            And, if the power
Of thrilling numbers to thy soul be dear,

    Go, ...

They sat with hearts untroubled,
    The clear sky sparkled above,
And an ancient wisdom bubbled
    From the lips of a youthful love.

They read in a coloured history
    Of Egypt and of the Nile,
And half it seemed a mystery,
    Familiar, half, the while.

Till living out of the story
    Grew old Egyptian men,
And a shadow looked forth Rory
    And said, "We meet again!"

And over Aileen a maiden
    Looked back through the ages dim:
She laughed, and her eyes were laden
    With an old-time love for him.

In a mist came temples thronging
    With sphinxes seen in a row,
And the rest of the day was a longing
    For their homes of long ago.

"We'd go there if they'd let us,"
    They said with wounded pride:...