A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow-- You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream: Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision or in none, Is it therefore the less _gone_?
_All_ that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented sh.o.r.e, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand-- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep While I weep--while I weep!
O G.o.d! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp?
O G.o.d! can I not save _One_ from the pitiless wave?
Is _all_ that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
1849.
TO MARIE LOUISE (SHEW).
Of all who hail thy presence as the morning-- Of all to whom thine absence is the night-- The blotting utterly from out high heaven The sacred sun--of all who, weeping, bless thee Hourly for hope--for life--ah, above all, For the resurrection of deep buried faith In truth, in virtue, in humanity-- Of all who, on despair"s unhallowed bed Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen At thy soft-murmured words, "Let there be light!"
At thy soft-murmured words that were fulfilled In thy seraphic glancing of thine eyes-- Of all who owe thee most, whose grat.i.tude Nearest resembles worship,--oh, remember The truest, the most fervently devoted, And think that these weak lines are written by him-- By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think His spirit is communing with an angel"s.
1847.
TO MARIE LOUISE (SHEW).
Not long ago, the writer of these lines, In the mad pride of intellectuality, Maintained "the power of words"--denied that ever A thought arose within the human brain Beyond the utterance of the human tongue: And now, as if in mockery of that boast, Two words--two foreign soft dissyllables-- Italian tones, made only to be murmured By angels dreaming in the moonlit "dew That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,"-- Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart, Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought, Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions Than even the seraph harper, Israfel, (Who has "the sweetest voice of all G.o.d"s creatures,") Could hope to utter. And I! my spells are broken.
The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.
With thy dear name as text, though hidden by thee, I cannot write--I cannot speak or think-- Alas, I cannot feel; for "tis not feeling, This standing motionless upon the golden Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams, Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista, And thrilling as I see, upon the right, Upon the left, and all the way along, Amid empurpled vapors, far away To where the prospect terminates--_thee only_!
THE CITY IN THE SEA.
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers and tremble not!) Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot, Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from the holy Heaven come down On the long night-time of that town; But light from out the lurid sea Streams up the turrets silently-- Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-- Up domes--up spires--up kingly halls-- Up fanes--up Babylon-like walls-- Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-- Up many and many a marvellous shrine Whose wreathed friezes intertwine The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air, While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping graves Yawn level with the luminous waves; But not the riches there that lie In each idol"s diamond eye-- Not the gaily-jewelled dead Tempt the waters from their bed; For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of gla.s.s-- No swellings tell that winds may be Upon some far-off happier sea-- No heavings hint that winds have been On seas less hideously serene.
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave--there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside, In slightly sinking, the dull tide-- As if their tops had feebly given A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow-- The hours are breathing faint and low-- And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, h.e.l.l, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence.
1835?
THE SLEEPER