I was alone. A miry road
I followed, all in vain;
No well-known hill the landscape showed,
It was a wretched plain;
Where mounds of rubbish, ugly pits,
And brick-fields scarred the globe;
Those wastes where desolation sits
Without her ancient robe.
A drizzling rain proclaimed the skies
As wretched as the earth;
I wandered on, and weary sighs
Were all my lot was worth.
When sudden, as I turned my way,
Burst in the ocean-waves:
And lo! a blue wild-dancing bay
Fantastic rocks and caves!
I wept with joy. Ah! sometimes so,
In common daylight grief,
A beauty to the heart will go,
And bring the heart relief.
And, wandering, reft of hope or friend,
If such a thing should be,
One day we take the downward bend,
And lo, Eternity!
I wept with joy, delicious tears,
Which dreams alone bestow;
Until, mayhap, from out the years
We sleep, and further go.
6.
Now I will mould a dream, awake,
Which I, asleep, would dream;
From all the forms of fancy take
One that shall also seem;
Seem in my verse (if not my brain),
Which sometimes may rejoice
In airy forms of Fancy's train,
Though nobler are my choice.
Some truth o'er all the land may lie
In children's dreams at night;
They do not build the charmed sky
That domes them with delight.
And o'er the years that follow soon,
So all unlike the dreams,
Wander their odours, gleams their moon,
And flow their winds and streams.