A chamber that is like a reverie; a chamber truly spiritual, where the stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue.
There the soul bathes itself in indolence made odorous with regret and desire. There is some sense of the twilight, of things tinged with blue and rose: a dream of delight during an eclipse. The shape of the furniture is elongated, low, languishing; one would think it endowed with the somnambulistic vitality of plants and minerals.
The tapestries speak an inarticulate language, like the flowers, the skies, the dropping suns.
There are no artistic abominations upon the walls.
Compared with the pure dream, with an impression unanalysed, definite art, positive art, is a blasphemy.
Here all has the sufficing lucidity and the delicious obscurity of music.
An infinitesimal odour of the m...

On nights like this, when bayou and lagoon
Dream in the moonlight's mystic radiance,
I seem to walk like one deep in a trance
With old-world myths born of the mist and moon.

Lascivious eyes and mouths of sensual rose
Smile into mine; and breasts of luring light,
And tresses streaming golden to the night,
Persuade me onward where the forest glows.

And then it seems along the haunted hills
There falls a flutter as of beautiful feet,
As if tempestuous troops of Mænads meet
To drain deep bowls and shout and have their wills.

And then I feel her limbs will be revealed
Like some great snow-white moth among the trees;
Her vampire beauty, waiting there to seize
And dance me downward where my doom is sealed.

Dusk wraps the village in its dim caress;
Each chimney's vapour, like a thin grey rod,
Mounting aloft through miles of quietness,
    Pillars the skies of God.

Far up they break or seem to break their line,
Mingling their nebulous crests that bow and nod
Under the light of those fierce stars that shine
    Out of the calm of God.

Only in clouds and dreams I felt those souls
In the abyss, each fire hid in its clod,
From which in clouds and dreams the spirit rolls
    Into the vast of God.

VII.

Fairies.


    Glory endures when calumny hath fled;
    And fairies show themselves, in friendly guise,
    To all who hold a trust beyond the dead,
    And all who pray, albeit so worldly-wise,
    With cheerful hearts or wildly-weeping eyes.
    They come and go when children are in bed
    To gladden them with dreams from out the skies
    And sanctify all tears that they have shed!
    Fairies are wing'd for wandering to and fro.
    They live in legends; they survive the Greeks.
    Wisdom is theirs; they live for us and grow,
    Like...

Day gradual fades, in evening gray,
Its last faint beam hath fled,
And sinks the sun's declining ray
In ocean's wavy bed.
So o'er the loves and joys of youth
Thy waves, Indifference, roll;
So mantles round our days of truth
That death-pool of the soul.

Spreads o'er the heavens the shadowy night
Her dim and shapeless form,
So human pleasures, frail and light,
Are lost in passion's storm.
So fades the sunshine of the breast,
So passion's dreamings fall,
So friendship's fervours sink to rest,
Oblivion shrouds them all.

Beyond the moon, within a land of mist,
    Lies the dim Garden of all Dead Desires,
Walled round with morning's clouded amethyst,
    And haunted of the sunset's shadowy fires;
There all lost things we loved hold ghostly tryst -
    Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires.

Sad are the stars that day and night exist
    Above the Garden of all Dead Desires;
And sad the roses that within it twist
    Deep bow'rs; and sad the wind that through it quires;
But sadder far are they who there hold tryst -
    Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires.

There, like a dove, upon the twilight's wrist,
    Soft in the Garden of all Dead Desires,
Sleep broods; and there, where never a serpent hissed,
    On the wan willows music hangs her l...

I walk down the Valley of Silence --
Down the dim, voiceless valley -- alone!
And I hear not the fall of a footstep
Around me, save God's and my own;
And the hush of my heart is as holy
As hovers where angels have flown!

Long ago was I weary of voices
Whose music my heart could not win;
Long ago was I weary of noises
That fretted my soul with their din;
Long ago was I weary of places
Where I met but the human -- and sin.

I walked in the world with the worldly;
I craved what the world never gave;
And I said:    "In the world each Ideal,
That shines like a star on life's wave,
Is wrecked on the shores of the Real,
And sleeps like a dream in a grave."

And still did I pine for the Perfect,
And still found the False with the True;

Oh! is it Death that comes
To have a foretaste of the whole?
    To-night the planets and the stars
    Will glimmer through my window-bars
But will not shine upon my soul!

For I shall lie as dead
Though yet I am above the ground;
    All passionless, with scarce a breath,
    With hands of rest and eyes of death,
I shall be carried swiftly round.

Or if my life should break
The idle night with doubtful gleams,
    Through mossy arches will I go,
    Through arches ruinous and low,
And chase the true and false in dreams.

Why should I fall asleep?
When I am still upon my bed
    The moon will shine, the winds will rise
    And all around and through the skies
The light clouds travel o'er my head!

O busy, busy things,

As I went through the wood, the wood,
Through fern and pimpernel,
A water fell, a water stood,
Twinkling within a dell,
And Naiad fancies, gleaming, hung
Like bubbles there the moss among.

And as I sat beside the fall
And watched a rainbow beam,
There rose a dream, a spirit tall,
Out of the woodland stream:
Bright, prismed bubbles in her hair,
She rose and smiled upon me there.

But as I gazed at her and gazed,
Dim bubbles grew her eyes;
And frail of dyes her body raised,
And'vanished in the skies:
And with the spirit went my dream
A rainbow bubble of the stream.

Thou scarest me with dreams.
    -JOB.

When Night's last hours, like haunting spirits, creep
With listening terrors round the couch of sleep,
And Midnight, brooding in its deepest dye,
Seizes on Fear with dismal sympathy,
"I dreamed a dream" something akin to fate,
Which Superstition's blackest thoughts create--
Something half natural to the grave that seems,
Which Death's long trance of slumber haply dreams;
A dream of staggering horrors and of dread,
Whose shadows fled not when the vision fled,
But clung to Memory with their gloomy view,
Till Doubt and Fancy half believed it true.

That time was come, or seem'd as it was come,
When Death no longer makes the grave his home;
When waking spirits leave their earthly rest
To mix for ever with the ...

Most delicate Ariel! submissive thing,
Won by the mind's high magic to its hest -
Invisible embassy, or secret guest, -
Weighing the light air on a lighter wing; -
Whether into the midnight moon, to bring
Illuminate visions to the eye of rest, -
Or rich romances from the florid West, -
Or to the sea, for mystic whispering, -
Still by thy charm'd allegiance to the will,
The fruitful wishes prosper in the brain,
As by the fingering of fairy skill, -
Moonlight, and waters, and soft music's strain,
Odors, and blooms, and my Miranda's smile,
Making this dull world an enchanted isle.

I saw a room where many feet were dancing.
The ceiling and the wall were mirrors glancing
Both flames of candles and the heaven's light,
Though windows there were none for air or flight.
The room was in a form polygonal
Reached by a little door and narrow hall.
One could behold them enter for the dance,
And waken as it were out of a trance,
And either singly or with some one whirl:
The old, the young, full livers, boy and girl.
And every panel of the room was just
A mirrored door through which a hand was thrust
Here, there, around the room, a soul to seize
Whereat a scream would rise, but no surcease
Of music or of dancing, save by him
Drawn through the mirrored panel to the dim
And unknown space behind the flashing mirrors,
And by his partner struck thro...

I had folded my flock, and my heart was o'erflowing,
I loiter'd beside the small lake on the heath;
The red sun, though down, left his drapery glowing,
And no sound was stirring, I heard not a breath:
I sat on the turf, but I meant not to sleep,
And gazed o'er that lake which for ever is new,
Where clouds over clouds appear'd anxious to peep
From this bright double sky with its pearl and its blue.

Forgetfulness, rather than slumber, it seem'd,
When in infinite thousands the fairies arose
All over the heath, and their tiny crests gleam'd
In mock'ry of soldiers, our friends and our foes.
There a stripling went forth, half a finger's length high,
And led a huge host to the north with a dash;
Silver birds upon poles went before their wild cry,
While the monarch l...

We laugh when our souls are the saddest,
We shroud all our griefs in a smile;
Our voices may warble their gladdest,
And our souls mourn in anguish the while.

And our eyes wear a summer's bright glory,
When winter is wailing beneath;
And we tell not the world the sad story
Of the thorn hidden back of the wreath.

Ah! fast flow the moments of laughter,
And bright as the brook to the sea
But ah! the dark hours that come after
Of moaning for you and for me.

Yea, swift as the sunshine, and fleeting
As birds, fly the moments of glee!
And we smile, and mayhap grief is sleeting
Its ice upon you and on me.

And the clouds of the tempest are shifting
O'er the heart, tho' the face may be bright;
And the snows of woe's winter are drifting

He said, "Good-night, my heart is light,
To-morrow morn at day
We two together in the dew
Shall forth and fare away.

"We shall go down, the halls of dawn
To find the doors of joy;
We shall not part again, dear heart."
And he laughed out like a boy.

He turned and strode down the blue road
Against the western sky
Where the last line of sunset glowed
As sullen embers die.

The night reached out her kraken arms
To clutch him as he passed,
And for one sudden moment
My soul shrank back aghast.

Thoughts do not need the wings of words
    To fly to any goal.
Like subtle lightnings, not like birds,
    They speed from soul to soul.

Hide in your heart a bitter thought -
    Still it has power to blight;
Think Love -although you speak it not
    It gives the world more light.

Bands of dark and bands of light
Lie athwart the homeward way;
Now we cross a belt of Night,
Now a strip of shining Day!

Now it is a month of June,
Now December's shivering hour;
Now rides high loved memories' Moon,
Now the Dark is dense with power!

Summers, winters, days, and nights,
Moons, and clouds, they come and go;
Joys and sorrows, pains, delights,
Hope and fear, and yes and no.

All is well: come, girls and boys,
Not a weary mile is vain!
Hark--dim laughter's radiant noise!
See the windows through the rain!

When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wove with silken thread
By dreaming ladies upon cloth
That has made fat the murderous moth;
The roses that of old time were
Woven by ladies in their hair,
The dew-cold lilies ladies bore
Through many a sacred corridor
Where such gray clouds of incense rose
That only the gods’ eyes did not close:
For that pale breast and lingering hand
Come from a more dream-heavy land,
A more dream-heavy hour than this;
And when you sigh from kiss to kiss
I hear white Beauty sighing, too,
For hours when all must fade like dew
But flame on flame, deep under deep,