O God! can I not grasp But a dream within a dream? TO ZANTE. FAIR isle, that from the fairest of all flowers, At sight of thee and thine at once awake! No more—no more upon thy verdant slopes! Transforming all! Thy charms shall please no more, Thy memory no more! Accursed ground Henceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled shore, O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante! 66 Isola d'oro! Fior di Levante!" By a route obscure and lonely, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, II. Bottomless vales and boundless floods, And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, For the dews that drip all over; Into seas without a shore; Seas that restlessly aspire, Lakes that endlessly outspread Their lone waters—lone and dead,— With the snows of the lolling lily. III. By the lakes that thus outspread -near the river Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever; Where dwell the Ghouls; By each spot the most unholy, There the traveller meets aghast IV. For the heart whose woes are legion But the traveller, travelling through it, V. By a route obscure and lonely, Where an Eidolon, namèd NIGHT, |