A Vision.

To-night, sweetheart, when all about me lay

In shadow deep the wood,

I felt my soul within me reel and sway

And pulse my sluggish blood,

As when along a quiet land-locked bay

Swells some resistless flood.

My spirit leapt from out its earthly prison,

Higher and ever higher,

Until it reached those barriers Elysian

Where the eternal fire

Creates one great impassable division

Twixt us and our desire.

Up, till it left the regions of the night,

Of sorrow and of fear,

Emerging into that soft mellow light,

That radiance pure and clear,

Where Love reigns all supreme, and all is bright

If only Love be near.

There through sweet meadows, on by brimming streams,

Wandered my soul at will,

And saw such forms as haunt our loveliest dreams

And, waking, haunt us still;

Voices like music, smiles like sunny beams

Lost in a rippling rill.

But ah! my soul saw one supremely fair,

One form the most divine,

One face enhaloed all with golden hair,

In beauty most benign,

Surpassing all the perfect beauty there:

Heart of my heart,‘ twas thine!

My soul went forth, but all grew strange and dim —

Meadow and stream were gone —

I heard a sound as of a far-off hymn

By night winds softly blown;

Then all around me seemed to sink and swim,

And I am here alone.