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Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee.

Dreams

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!

My spirit not awak‘ning till the beam

Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.

Yes! tho’ that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,

’T were better than the cold reality

Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,

And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,

A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.

But should it be—that dream eternally

Continuing—as dreams have been to me

In my young boyhood—should it thus be giv’n,

’T were folly still to hope for higher Heav’n.

For I have revell‘d, when the sun was bright

I’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light

And loveliness,—have left my very heart

In climes of mine imagining, apart

From mine own home, with beings that have been

Of mine own thought—what more could I have

seen?

’T was once—and only once—and the wild hour

From my remembrance shall not pass—some pow’r

Or spell had bound me—’t was the chilly wind

Came o‘er me in the night, and left behind

Its image on my spirit—or the moon

Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon

Too coldly—or the stars—howe’er it was,

That dream was as that night-wind—let it pass.

I have been happy, tho’ but in a dream.

I have been happy—and I love the theme:

Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life,

As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

Of semblance with reality which brings

To the delirious eye, more lovely things

Of Paradise and Love—and all our own!

Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

Spirits of the Dead

I

Thy soul shall find itself alone

’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone—

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy.

II

Be silent in that solitude,

Which is not loneliness—for then

The spirits of the dead who stood

In life before thee are again

In death around thee—and their will

Shall overshadow thee: be still.

III

The night, tho’ clear, shall frown—

And the stars shall look not down

From their high thrones in the heaven,

With light like Hope to mortals given—

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee for ever.

IV

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,

Now are visions ne’er to vanish;

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more—like dew-drop from the grass.

V

The breeze—the breath of God—is still—

And the mist upon the hill,

Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token—

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries!

Evening Star

’T was noontide of summer,

And mid-time of night;

And stars, in their orbits,

Shone pale, thro’ the light

Of the brighter, cold moon,

’Mid planets her slaves,

Herself in the Heavens,

Her beam on the waves.

I gaz’d a while

On her cold smile;

Too cold—too cold for me.

There pass’d as a shroud,

A fleecy cloud,

And I turn’d away to thee,

Proud Evening Star,

In thy glory afar,

And dearer thy beam shall be;

For joy to my heart

Is the proud part

Thou bearest in Heav’n at night,

And more I admire

Thy distant fire

Than that colder, lowly light.

A Dream. Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow—

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if Hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand—

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep—while I weep!

0 God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

0 God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Stanzas

How often we forget all time, when lone

Admiring Natune’s universal throne;

Her woods—her wilds—her mountains—the intense

Reply of HERS to OUR intelligence!

I

In youth have I known one