IV.
I remember, I remember, in my vigils cold and lone,
Brilliant reveries, burning fantasies, forever fled and gone!
Stately visions passed before me in the mystic realms of Mind,
Shapes of glory lightly wafted on the balmy summer wind;
Forms of pale and pensive loveliness, with eyes like pensile stars,
Such as never yet were beaming ’mid this world’s discordant jars.
And their whispers wild, unearthly, unutterable, fell
like a harp-string’s dying echo, or a fair young spirit’s knell,
On my soul amid the shadows of my native forest trees,
Rustling melancholy, lowly, in the wailing of the breeze,
Till, unknowing pain or agony, I’ve wept such blissful tears
As shall never, never flow again ’mid darker later years!