A gorgeous phantom, but a phantom still
That ever is, and ever is without.
We dwell amid the border flowers that bloom
To bless and cheer life’s brier-planted paths,
Its dusty turnpikes, and its scorching noons;
And thus our primal being is a dream
And most mysterious to the dreamer,
E’en as the dim and iron forms that frown
From the dark walls of some old corridor
On which the moonbeams thro’ the crumbling towers