You may find a thousand as fair; As I muse backward up the checkAnd yet there 's her face in my ered years Of the inexhaustible years? Have we not from the earth drawn juices Too fine for earth's sordid uses? Have I heard, have I seen All I feel, all I know? Doth my heart overween? Or could it have been Long ago? Sometimes a breath floats by me, An odor from Dreamland sent, That makes the ghost seem nigh me Of a splendor that came and went, Of a life lived somewhere, I know not In what diviner sphere, Of memories that stay not and go not, Like music heard once by an ear That cannot forget or reclaim it, A something so shy, it would shame it To make it a show, A something too vague, could I name it, For others to know, As if I had lived it or dreamed it, As if I had acted or schemed it, And yet, could I live it over, This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover, Moon and tide, bee and clover, As I seem to have been, once again, Could I but speak it and show it, This pleasure more sharp than My prying step would make him No feet avail; to hear it nigh, The song itself must lend the wings. Sing on, sweet bird close hid, and raise Those angel stairways in my brain, That climb from these low-vaulted days City of Elf-land, just without Sketched-in, mirage-like, on the I build thee in yon sunset cloud, Whose edge allures to climb the height; To spacious sunshines far from I hear thy drowned bells, inly. pain. Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet, I leave thy covert haunt untrod, To make a twice-told tale of They said the fairies tript no more, And long ago that Pan was dead; 'T was but that fools preferred to bore loud, From still pools dusk with dreams of night. Thy gates are shut to hardiest will, Thy countersign of long-lost speech, Those fountained courts, those chambers still, Fronting Time's far East, who shall reach? I know not, and will never pry, But trust our human heart for all; Earth's rind inch-deep for truth Wonders that from the seeker fly instead. Into an open sense may fall. Pan leaps and pipes all summer Hide in thine own soul, and sur The password of the unwary elves; Would we but doff our lenses Seek it, thou canst not bribe their dream; A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my hair, To think what chanced me by the pallid gleam Of a moon wraith that waned through haunted air. I walked one night in mystery of Pale fireflies pulsed within the meadow-mist |