A DREAM.

I.

IN visions of the dark night

I have dreamed of joy departed; But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted.

II.

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?

III.

That holy dream-that holy dream, While all the world were chiding, Hath cheered me as a lovely beam A lonely spirit guiding.

IV.

What though that light, through storm and night,

So trembled from afar;

What could there be more purely bright

In Truth's day-star?

IN spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wild 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.

II.

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.

III.

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.

IV.

Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in 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.

ROMANCE.

ROMANCE, 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;