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A Vision.
YE have heard of spirits that sail the air, | |
| Like birds that float over the mountains bare— | |
| Upborne with pinions of beauty on, | |
| When the farewell light of day is gone, | |
| And they gladly soar to the blue away, | 5 |
| As to catch the star’s young travelling ray | |
| Till the arch of night, | |
| Is tremblingly bright, | |
| As if meteors shot on their upward flight. | |
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| Ye have heard of spirits that sail away | 10 |
| To realms that glitter with endless day— | |
| Where the clouds scarce lift their giant forms | |
| In their far, dim march to the land of storms; | |
| Where the ocean of ether heaves around, | |
| And silence and dew alone are found! | 15 |
| Where life is still, | |
| By a boundless will, | |
| As a sabbath around some echoless hill! | |
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| Methought I was borne through the measureless fields, | |
| Where the silver moon and the comet wheels. | 20 |
| With a glorious thrilling of joy I went, | |
| And a tide of life through my heart was sent, | |
| As though a new fountain had burst control, | |
| And bade its streams o’er my pulses roll; | |
| And a shallop frail, | 25 |
| With a shadowy sail, | |
| Hurried me on with the singing gale. | |
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| It went through my brain, this deep delight, | |
| With a kindling sense of sound and sight; | |
| And it seem’d, as I rose, that the far blue air | 30 |
| Caught a hue of glory more richly rare, | |
| Than was ever reveal’d to earthly eyes— | |
| The cold, cold lustre of uppermost skies! | |
| And still my bark went | |
| Through the firmament, | 35 |
| As a thing to the walls of the universe sent. | |
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| When the sun roll’d up from the burning sea, | |
| Like a car of flame from immensity, | |
| I felt his beams quiver along my frame, | |
| When first o’er the clouds and stars they came; | 40 |
| And the light-dropping orbs I had slumber’d among, | |
| Their dim, dewy eyes o’er creation hung. | |
| As each beautiful ray | |
| Sunk sadly away, | |
| To the inner home of the high blue day! | 45 |
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| Then I sailed far off to the thundering clouds, | |
| That loomed on the air like spirits in shrouds, | |
| My vessel, sunk on their fleecy pillow, | |
| Seem’d a shadowy bark on a dreamy billow; | |
| And I floated through seas of vision’d things, | 50 |
| Where the waking breezes point their wings, | |
| While far below, | |
| ’Mid the lightning’s glow, | |
| I heard the dull sounds of the tempest go. | |
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| Then storm-clouds crossed my glowing track, | 55 |
| And launch’d me on through the hurrying rack, | |
| Till a new creation seem’d to rise | |
| In beauty all over the opening skies; | |
| And the spirits that pass’d on the wings of night, | |
| As they took their farewell feathery flight, | 60 |
| Pour’d melody out | |
| Like the far-off shout | |
| Of music that dies on its airy route! | |
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