A DREAM. N visions of the dark night

I have dreamed of joy departed — But a waking dream of life and light

Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day

To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray

Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream — that holy dream,

While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam,

A lonely spirit guiding.
What though that light, thro'storm and night,

So trembled from afar
What could there be more purely bright

In Truth's day-star?

ROMANCE.

OMANCE, who loves to nod and sing,

With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,

To me a painted paroquet
Hath been a most familiar bird -
Taught me my alphabet to say —
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child — with a most knowing eye.
Of late, eternal Condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Through gazing on the unquiet sky.
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings —
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away -- forbidden things !
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.

FAIRY-LAND.

NIM vales — and shadowy floods – D

And cloudy-looking woods,

Whose forms we can't discover For the tears that drip all over : Huge moons there wax and wane Again - again - again

Every moment of the night Forever changing places And they put out the star-light With the breath from their pale faces. About twelve by the moon-dial One more filmy than the rest (A kind which, upon trial, They have found to be the best) Comes down still down - and down With its centre on the crown Of a mountain's eminence, While its wide circumference In easy drapery falls Over hamlets, over halls, Wherever they may be O'er the strange woods — o'er the sea Over spirits on the wing – Over every drowsy thing And buries them up quite In a labyrinth of light And then, how deep !-oh, deep Is the passion of their sleep. In the morning they arise, And their moony covering Is soaring in the skies, With the tempests as they toss, Like - almost anything Or a yellow Albatross.

They use that moon no more
For the same end as before –
Videlicet a tent -
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies,
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again
(Never-contented things !)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.

N spring of youth it was my lot

To haunt of the wide world a spot

The which I could not love the less So lovely was the loneliness Of a wild lake, with black rock bound, And the tall pines that towered around. But when the Night had thrown her pall Upon that spot, as upon all, And the mystic wind went by Murmuring in melody Then -ah, then I would awake To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight -
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define –
Nor Love although the Love were thine.
Death was in that poisonous wave,
And its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining -
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.

SONG.

SAW thee on the bridal day,

When a burning blush came o'er thee, Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee:

And in thine eye a kindling light

(Whatever it might be)
Was all on Earth my aching sight

Of Loveliness could see.
That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame

As such it well may pass
Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame

In the breast of him, alas!