But, just like any other dream,
Upon the vapour of the dew

My own had passed, did not the beam
Of beauty which did while it thro'
The minute-the hour-the day-oppress
My mind with double loveliness.

We walk'd together on the crown
Of a high mountain which look'd down
Afar from its proud natural towers

Of rock and forest, on the hills— The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers, And shouting with a thousand rills.

I spoke to her of power and pride,
But mystically-in such guise
That she might deem it nought beside
The moment's converse; in her eyes

I read, perhaps too carelessly—

A mingled feeling with my ownThe flush on her bright cheek, to me Seem'd to become a queenly throne

Too well that I should let it be

Light in the wilderness alone.

I wrapp'd myself in grandeur then,
And donn'd a visionary crown-
Yet it was not that Fantasy

Had thrown her mantle over me

But that, among the rabble-men,

Lion ambition is chained down

And crouches to a keeper's hand—
Not so in deserts where the grand-
The wild-the terrible conspire

With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look 'round thee now on Samarcand!Is not she queen of Earth? her pride Above all cities? in her hand

Their destinies? in all beside

Of glory which the world hath known
Stands she not nobly and alone?
Falling-her veriest stepping-stone

Shall form the pedestal of a throne

And who her sovereign? Timour-he

Whom the astonished people saw

Striding o'er empires haughtily—

A diadem'd outlaw !

O, human love! thou spirit given
On Earth of all we hope in Heaven!
Which fall'st into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc-wither'd plain,

And failing in thy power to bless,
But leav'st the heart a wilderness !
Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound,

And beauty of so wild a birth—
Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

When Hope, the eagle that tower'd, could see

No cliff beyond him in the sky,

His pinions were bent droopingly

And homeward turn'd his soften'd eye.

'Twas sunset: when the sun will part

There comes a sullenness of heart

To him who still would look upon

The glory of the summer sun.

That soul will hate the ev'ning mist,

So often lovely, and will list

To the sound of the coming darkness (known To those whose spirits hearken) as one

Who, in a dream of night, would fly

But cannot from a danger nigh.

What though the moon-the white moon

Shed all the splendour of her noon,

Her smile is chilly-and her beam,

In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.

And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one—

For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown-

Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall

With the noon-day beauty-which is all.

I reach'd my home-my home no more—

For all had flown who made it so.

I pass'd from out its mossy door,

And, tho' my tread was soft and low,
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known-
O, I defy thee, Hell, to show

On beds of fire that burn below,

A humbler heart-a deeper woe.

Father, I firmly do believe

I know-for Death who comes for me

From regions of the blest afar,

Where there is nothing to deceive,
Hath left his iron gate ajar,
And rays of truth you cannot see
Are flashing thro' Eternity——

I do believe that Eblis hath
A snare in every human path-
Else how, when in the holy grove
I wandered of the idol, Love,