THE VISION

Of that dear vale where you and I have lain

Scanning the mysteries of life and death

I dreamed, though how impassable the space

Of time between the present and the past!

This was the vision that possessed my mind;

I thought the weird and gusty days of March

Had eased themselves in melody and peace.

Pale lights, swift shadows, lucent stalks, clear streams,

Cool, rosy eves behind the penciled mesh

Of hazel thickets, and the huge feathered boughs

Of walnut trees stretched singing to the blast;

And the first pleasantries of sheep and kine;

The cautioned twitterings of hidden birds;

The flight of geese among the scattered clouds;

Night's weeping stars and all the pageantries

Of awakened life had blossomed into May,

Whilst she with trailing violets in her hair

Blew music from the stops of watery stems,

And swept the grasses with her viewless robes,

Which dreaming men thought voices, dreaming still.

Now as I lay in vision by the stream

That flows amidst our well beloved vale,

I looked throughout the vista stretched between

Two ranging hills; one meadowed rich in grass;

The other wooded, thick and quite obscure

With overgrowth, rank in the luxury

Of all wild places, but ever growing sparse

Of trees or saplings on the sudden slope

That met the grassy level of the vale;—

But still within the shadow of those woods,

Which sprinkled all beneath with fragrant dew,

There grew all flowers, which tempted little paths

Between them, up and on into the wood.

Here, as the sun had left his midday peak

The incommunicable blue of heaven blent

With his fierce splendor, filling all the air

With softened glory, while the pasturage

Trembled with color of the poppy blooms

Shook by the steps of the swift-sandaled wind.

Nor any sound beside disturbed the dream

Of Silence slumbering on the drowsy flowers.

Then as I looked upon the widest space

Of open meadow where the sunlight fell

In veils of tempered radiance, I saw

The form of one who had escaped the care

And equal dullness of our common day.

For like a bright mist rising from the earth

He made appearance, growing more distinct

Until I saw the stole, likewise the lyre

Grasped by the fingers of the modeled hand.

Yea, I did see the glory of his hair

Against the deep green bay-leaves filleting

The ungathered locks. And so throughout the vale

His figure stood distinct and his own shade

Was the sole shadow. Deeming this approach

Augur of good, as if in hidden ways

Of loveliness the gods do still appear

The counselors of men, and even where

Wonder and meditation wooed us oft,

I cried, “Apollo” — and his form dissolved,

As if the nymphs of echo, who took up

The voice and bore it to the hollow wood,

By that same flight had startled the great god

To vanishment. And thereupon I woke

And disarrayed the figment of my thought.

For of the very air, magic with hues,

Blent with the distant objects, I had formed

The splendid apparition, and so knew

It was, alas! a dream within a dream!