Musing sit I on the settle
By the firelight’s cheerful blaze,
Listening to the busy kettle
Humming long-forgotten lays.
And beside me sits a kitten,
Warming at the blaze her feet;
Strangely are my senses smitten
As the flickering flames they meet.
Many a dim long-buried story
O’er me soon begins to rise,
But with dead and faded glory,
And in strange and mask’d disguise.
Lovely women with shrewd faces
Greet me with a secret smile,
Then the harlequins run races,
Laughing merrily the while.
Distant marble-gods nod kindly,
Dreamily beside them grow
Fable-flow’rs, whose leaves wave blindly
In the moonlight to and fro.
Magic castles, once resplendent,
Ruin’d now, in sight appear;
Knights in armour, squires attendant
Quickly follow in their rear.
All these visions I discover
As with shadowy haste they pass,—
Ah, the kettle’s boiling over,
And the kitten’s burnt, alas!
7. LONGING.
Thou beholdest in thy vision
Fable’s silent flow’rs before thee,
And a yearning wild steals o’er thee
At their fragrant scent elysian.
But thou from those flow’rs art parted
By a gulf both deep and fearful;
Thou becomest sad and tearful,
And at last art broken-hearted.