HAUNTED EARTH
Heaven at last
Is bared, and the whole world one radiant room—
Black are the shadows, in great pools of gloom
By copse and thicket cast.
The cattle browse
With sound of gentle breathing, and their breath
Is mild in glimmering meadows, or beneath
Drooped branches, where they drowse;
While ’mongst the chill
Shadows, and cold, clear moonlight all about,
A single bat goes dipping in and out
Softly; and all is still.
Silence around—
Save for a cricket! Lapped in slumb’rous peace
Lie hill and meadowland, the shining seas
Lap on them without sound.
It is earth’s cry
Lifted in adoration: the old dream,
Beauty, is with her, and her hour supreme
That goes so swiftly by.
Too well she knows
The sweet Illusion, from no earthly shore
Visitant, the bright word that evermore
Troubles her dark repose.
Her heart lies bare—
Drunken, drunken, she lifts a dreamy breast;
Hour by hour, in rapture and unrest
Flows the unending prayer.
The path of night
Reaches, from rim to rim, a radiant road
Whereon the exalted Beauty walks abroad
In wonder and wild light.
Upon what eyes,
Lifted in homesickness, now falls again
The loveliness that haunts the world with pain—
Light out of Paradise!