Your mind and mine are such great lovers they
Have freed themselves from cautious human clay,
And on wild clouds of thought, naked together
They ride above us in extreme delight;
We see them, we look up with a lone envy
And watch them in their zone of crystal weather
That changes not for winter or the night.

Little eyelids, cease your winking;
Little orbs, forget to beam;
Little soul, to slumber sinking,
Let the fairies rule your dream.
Breezes, through the lattice sweeping,
Sing their lullabies the while--
And a star-ray, softly creeping
To thy bedside, woos thy smile.
But no song nor ray entrancing
Can allure thee from the spell
Of the tiny fairies dancing
O'er the eyes they love so well.
See, we come in countless number--
I, their queen, and all my court--
Haste, my precious one, to slumber
Which invites our fairy sport.

        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, ...

No new delights to our desire
    The singers of the past can yield.
    I lift mine eyes to hill and field,
And see in them your yet dumb lyre,
    Poets unborn and unrevealed.

Singers to come, what thoughts will start
    To song? what words of yours be sent
    Through man's soul, and with earth be blent?
These worlds of nature and the heart
    Await you like an instrument.

Who knows what musical flocks of words
    Upon these pine-tree tops will light,
    And crown these towers in circling flight
And cross these seas like summer birds,
    And give a voice to the day and night?

Something of you already is ours;
    Some mystic part of you belongs
    To us whose dreams your future throngs,
Who look on hills, and trees, and flo...

The path that winds by wood and stream
Is not the path for me to-day;
The path I take is one of dream,
That leads me down a twilight way.

By towns, where myths have only been;
By streams, no mortal foot hath crossed;
To gardens of hesperian sheen,
By halcyon seas for ever lost.

By forests, moonlight haunts alone,
(Diana with her silvery fawn;)
By fields, whereon the stars are sown,
(The wildflowers gathered of the Dawn.)

To orchards of eternal fruit,
That never mortal hand shall take;
Around whose central tree and root
Is coiled the never-sleeping Snake.

The Dragon, lost in listening, curled
Around the trunk whose fruit is gold:
The ancient wisdom of the world
Guarding the glory never old.

The one desire, that ...

I heard (alas! 'twas only in a dream)
Strains, which, as sage Antiquity believed,
By waking ears have sometimes been received
Wafted adown the wind from lake or stream;
A most melodious requiem, a supreme
And perfect harmony of notes, achieved
By a fair Swan on drowsy billows heaved,
O'er which her pinions shed a silver gleam.
For is she not the votary of Apollo?
And knows she not, singing as he inspires,
That bliss awaits her which the ungenial Hollow
Of the dull earth partakes not, nor desires?
Mount, tuneful Bird, and join the immortal quires!
She soared, and I awoke, struggling in vain to follow.

Buried in childhood's cloudless dreams, a fair-haired nursling lay,
A soft smile hovered round the lips as if still oped to pray;
And then a vision came to him, of beauty, strange and mild,
Such as may only fill the dreams of a pure sinless child.

Stood by his couch an angel fair, with radiant, glitt'ring wings
Of hues as bright as the living gems the fount to Heaven flings;
With loving smile he bent above the fair child cradled there,
While sounds of sweet seraphic power stole o'er the fragrant air.

"Child, list to me," he softly said, "on mission high I'm here:
Sent by that Glorious One to whom Heav'n bows in loving fear;
I seek thee now, whilst thou art still on the threshold of earth's strife,
To speak of what thou knowest not yet, this new and wond'rous life.

These are the days of elfs and fays:
Who says that with the dreams of myth,
These imps and elves disport themselves?
Ah no, along the paths of song
Do all the tiny folk belong.

Round all our homes,
Kobolds and gnomes do daily cling,
Then nightly fling their lanterns out.
And shout on shout, they join the rout,
And sing, and sing, within the sweet enchanted ring.

Where gleamed the guile of moonlight's smile,
Once paused I, listening for a while,
And heard the lay, unknown by day,--
The fairies' dancing roundelay.

Queen Mab was there, her shimmering hair
Each fairy prince's heart's despair.
She smiled to see their sparkling glee,
And once I ween, she smiled at me.

Since when, you may by night or day,
Dispute the sway of elf...

It is the hither side, O Hope,
And afternoon; our shadows slope
Backward along the mountain cope.

The early morning was so sweet,
We seemed to climb with winged feet,
Like moving vapors fine and fleet,

Not more elastic poised and swung
Harebell or yellow adder's tongue,
Nor blither any bird that sung.

Thy light foot bent not any stem
Of frailest plant, whose diadem
In passing kissed thy garment's hem.

O Hope! so near me and so bright,
Thy foot above me on the height,
I might not touch thy garments white.

Thy lifted face, so fair, so rapt,
Like sunshine rolled and overlapped
Cliff, slope, and tall peak thunder-capped.

Thy voice to me like silver brooks
Down dropped from secret mountain nooks,
Still drew me...

Now when the spirit in us wakes and broods,
Filled with home yearnings, drowsily it flings
From its deep heart high dreams and mystic moods,
Mixed with the memory of the loved earth things;
Clothing the vast with a familiar face;
Reaching its right hand forth to greet the starry race.

Wondrously near and clear the great warm fires
Stare from the blue; so shows the cottage light
To the field labourer whose heart desires
The old folk by the nook, the welcome bright
From the house-wife long parted from at dawn--
So the star villages in God's great depths withdrawn.

Nearer to Thee, not by delusion led,
Though there no house fires burn nor bright eyes gaze,
We rise, but by the symbol charioted,
Through loved things rising up to Love's own ways
By these ...

    I.

    A glory on the chamber wall!
    A glory in the brain!
    Triumphant floods of glory fall
    On heath, and wold, and plain.

    Earth lieth still in hopeless bliss;
    She has, and seeks no more;
    Forgets that days come after this,
    Forgets the days before.

    Each ripple waves a flickering fire
    Of gladness, as it runs;
    They laugh and flash, and leap and spire,
    And toss ten thousand suns.

    But hark! low, in the world within,
    One sad aeolian tone:
    "Ah! shall we ever, ever win
    A summer of our own?"


    II.

    A morn of winds and swaying trees--
    Earth's jubilance rushing out!
    The birds are fighting with the breeze;
    The waters heave about...

The full, clear moon uprose and spread
Her cold, pale splendor o'er the sea;
A light-strewn path that seemed to lead
Outward into eternity.
Between the darkness and the gleam
An old-world spell encompassed me:
Methought that in a godlike dream
I trod upon the sea.

And lo! upon that glimmering road,
In shining companies unfurled,
The trains of many a primal god,
The monsters of the elder world;
Strange creatures that, with silver wings,
Scarce touched the ocean's thronging floor,
The phantoms of old tales, and things
Whose shapes are known no more.

Giants and demi-gods who once
Were dwellers of the earth and sea,
And they who from Deucalion's stones,
Rose men without an infancy;
Beings on whose majestic lids
Time's solemn se...

I left my home for travelling;
Because I heard the strange birds sing
In foreign skies, and felt their wing

Brush past my soul impatiently;
I saw the bloom on flower and tree
That only grows beyond the sea.

Methought the distant voices spake
More wisdom than near tongues can make;
I followed-lest my heart should break.

And what is past is past and done.
I dreamt, and here the dream begun:
I saw a salmon in the sun

Leap from the river to the shore-
Ah! strange mishap, so wounded sore,
To his sweet stream to turn no more.

A bird from ’neath his mother’s breast,
Spread his weak wings in vain request;
Never again to reach his nest.

I saw a blossom bloom too soon
Upon a summer’s afternoon;
’Twill breathe no mo...

These have a life that hath no part in death;
These circumscribe the soul and make it strong;
Between the breathing of a dream and song,
Building a world of beauty in a breath.
Unto the heart the voice of this one saith
Ideals, its emotions live among;
Unto the mind the other speaks a tongue
Of visions, where the guess, we christen faith,
May face the fact of immortality
As may a rose its unembodied scent,
Or star its own reflected radiance.
We do not know these save unconsciously.
To whose mysterious shadows God hath lent
No certain shape, no certain countenance.

The verge of Creation. Enter Werner and Spirit.

Werner.

We have outtravelled light and sound:
The harmonies that pealed around us, as
Through yon array of dim and distant worlds
We winged our flight, have wholly died away,
Or come to us so faintly echoed, that
Our ears must watch and wait to catch them.
Those stars are now like watch-fires, which though seen
Blazing afar, send not their light to make
The path of the benighted wanderer
More plain and cheerful.
Before us stretches one vast field of gloom,
So dense as to appear impenetrable: -
Darkness, that has a body and a form,
Both palpable to touch and sight, across
Our path a barrier rears that seems to bar
Our farther progress. If there be, beyond
This wall of blackness, aught of myst...

Ten o'clock: the broken moon
    Hangs not yet a half hour high,
    Yellow as a shield of brass,
In the dewy air of June,
    Poised between the vaulted sky
    And the ocean's liquid glass.


Earth lies in the shadow still;
    Low black bushes, trees, and lawn
    Night's ambrosial dews absorb;
Through the foliage creeps a thrill,
    Whispering of yon spectral dawn
    And the hidden climbing orb.


Higher, higher, gathering light,
    Veiling with a golden gauze
    All the trembling atmosphere,
See, the rayless disk grows white!
    Hark, the glittering billows pause!

    Faint, far sounds possess the ear.


Elves on such a night as this
    Spin their rings upon the grass;
    On the beach the wate...

    Imagination's eyes
    Outreach and distance far
    The vision of the greatest star
    That measures instantaneously -
    Enisled therein as in a sea -
    Its cincture of the system-laden skies.
    Abysses closed about with night
    A tribute yield
    To her retardless sight;
    And Matter's gates disclose the candent ores
    Rock-held in furnaces of planet-cores.
    She penetrates the sun's transplendent shield,
    And through the obstruction of his vestment dire,
    Pierces the centermost sublimity
    Of his terrific heart, whose gurge of fire
    Heaves upward like a monstrous sea,
    And inly riven by Titanic throes,
    Fills all his frame with outward cataract
    Of separate and immingling torrent streams.
    Her eyes e...

Then up the orient heights to the zenith that balanced a crescent, -
Up and far up and over, - a warm erubescence liquescent
Rioted roses and rubies; eruptions of opaline gems,
Flung and wide sown, blushed crushed, and crumbled from diadems
Wealth of the kings of the Sylphs; whence, old alchemist, Earth -
Dewed down - by chemistry occult fashions petrified waters of worth. -
Then out of the stain and rash furor, the passionate pulver of stone,
The trembling suffusion that dazzled and awfully shone,
Chamelion-convulsion of color, hilarious ranges of glare -
Like a god who for vengeance ires, nodding battle from every hair,
Fares forth with majesty girdled and clangs with hot heroes for life,
Till the brazen gates boom bursten hells and the walls roar bristling strife, -
Athwart wi...