| |
| HAVE I dreamed? or was it real, | |
| What I saw as in a vision, | |
| When to marches hymeneal | |
| In the land of the Ideal | |
| Moved my thought o’er Fields Elysian? | 5 |
| |
| What! are these the guests whose glances | |
| Seemed like sunshine gleaming round me? | |
| These the wild, bewildering fancies, | |
| That with dithyrambic dances | |
| As with magic circles bound-me? | 10 |
| |
| Ah! how cold are their caresses! | |
| Pallid cheeks, and haggard bosoms! | |
| Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses, | |
| And from loose, dishevelled tresses | |
| Fall the hyacinthine blossoms! | 15 |
| |
| O my songs! whose winsome measures | |
| Filled my heart with secret rapture! | |
| Children of my golden leisures! | |
| Must even your delights and pleasures | |
| Fade and perish with the capture? | 20 |
| |
| Fair they seemed, those songs sonorous, | |
| When they came to me unbidden; | |
| Voices single, and in chorus, | |
| Like the wild birds singing o’er us | |
| In the dark of branches hidden. | 25 |
| |
| Disenchantment! Disillusion! | |
| Must each noble aspiration | |
| Come at last to this conclusion, | |
| Jarring discord, wild confusion, | |
| Lassitude, renunciation? | 30 |
| |
| Not with steeper fall nor faster, | |
| From the sun’s serene dominions, | |
| Not through brighter realms nor vaster, | |
| In swift ruin and disaster, | |
| Icarus fell with shattered pinions! | 35 |
| |
| Sweet Pandora! dear Pandora! | |
| Why did mighty Jove create thee | |
| Coy as Thetis, fair as Flora, | |
| Beautiful as young Aurora, | |
| If to win thee is to hate thee? | 40 |
| |
| No, not hate thee! for this feeling | |
| Of unrest and long resistance | |
| Is but passionate appealing, | |
| A prophetic whisper stealing | |
| O’er the chords of our existence. | 45 |
| |
| Him whom thou dost once enamor, | |
| Thou, beloved, never leavest; | |
| In life’s discord, strife, and clamor, | |
| Still he feels thy spell of glamour; | |
| Him of Hope thou ne’er bereavest. | 50 |
| |
| Weary hearts by thee are lifted, | |
| Struggling souls by thee are strength ened, | |
| Clouds of fear asunder rifted, | |
| Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted, | |
| Lives, like days in summer, lengthened! | 55 |
| |
| Therefore art thou ever dearer, | |
| O my Sibyl, my deceiver! | |
| For thou makest each mystery clearer, | |
| And the unattained seems nearer, | |
| When thou fillest my heart with fever! | 60 |
| |
| Muse of all the Gifts and Graces! | |
| Though the fields around us wither, | |
| There are ampler realms and spaces, | |
| Where no foot has left its traces: | |
| Let us turn and wander thither! | 65 |
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