At the spread pattern broadwise have gone mad. As in a high-walled oriental street A sudden door flies open, and a fleet Departing dream the thirsty traveler sees Of fountains leaping in the shade of trees, So they who once have caught the glimpse divine: They have but wet their lips with goblins' wine, And, plagued with thirst immortal, must endure The visions of the heavenly calenture,— Of springs and dewy evening meadows rave, While hotly round them shines the tropic wave, And the false islands of mirage appear, Uplifted from some transcendental sphere Far down below the blue horizon line. And thirst like theirs is nursed by songs like thine. For thou, in some crepscular dim hour, When the weak umber moon had hardly power To cast a shadow, and a wind, half-spent, Creeping among the way-side bushes went, Hast seen a cobweb spun across the moon, A faint eclipse, penumbral, gone full soon, Yet marking on the planet's smoky ring A silhouette as of a living thing. Or on the beach making thy lonely range, Close upon sunset, when the light was strange And the low wind had meanings, thou hast known A presence nigh, betrayed by shadows thrown On the red sand from bodies out of sight; Even as, by the shell of curving light Pared from the dark moon's edge, the eye can tell Where her full circle rounds invisible. 

 Teach me the path into that silent land. Take once again the haunted wires in hand, And pour the strain which, waking, thou hast heard Whistled when night was deep by some lone bird Hid in the dark and dewy sycamore,— When thou hast risen and unbarred the door And walked the garden paths till night was flown, Listening the message sent to thee alone. Ah! once again thy harp, thy voice once more, Fling back the refluent tide upon the shore. All nature grows unearthly; all things seem To break and waver off in shapes of dream, And through the chinks of matter steals the dawn Of skies beyond the solar road withdrawn. Oh, flood my soul with that pure morning-red! It is the sense that's shut, the heart that's dead: All open still the world of spirits lies Would we but bathe us in its red sunrise. 

 

 

   THE IDEAS OF THE PURE REASON 

 I saw in dreams a constellation strange, Thwarting the night; its big stars seemed to range Northward across the zenith, and to keep Calm footing along heaven's ridge-pole high, While round the pole the sullen Bear did creep And dizzily the wheeling spheres went by. They from their watch-towers in the topmost sky Looked down upon the rest, Nor eastward swerved nor west, Though Procyon's 

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