THERE is a land of rare realities Whose sunsets all are golden, and whose dawns Are as the first white dawn that flashed Upon a new-forged world. Its afternoons Are silver-sandaled dreams of phantasy, Its nights are deepened twilights, cool, and sweet With some strange incense, and its moons Unwearied from their climbing of the skies, Reflect the splendor of that brighter clime Which mortals ken in dreaming. Through the heart Of this fair land, a river blue as austral skies Murmurs a haunting song. Its stretch of shores Is laid with marble whiter than its moons, And on the snowy tiles the people come At evening from their palaces which rise In pearl succession back unto the brow Of purple hills. And there, with chant and song, Or liquid utterance in voices soft These happiest of mortals walk and dream; There is no striving, life goes idly by, As idly as an aspen shakes its leaves; They walk and rest and dream, they love Better than people ever loved before; It is the land wherein we all have been A moment or a year. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE LOST JEWEL by EMILY DICKINSON ODE TO BEAUTY by RALPH WALDO EMERSON EPITAPHS OF THE WAR, 1914-18: CONVOY ESCORT by RUDYARD KIPLING VETERAN SIRENS by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON NATIONAL ODE; INDEPENDENCE SQUARE, PHILADELPHIA by BAYARD TAYLOR THESE ENDURE by MARION H. ADDINGTON |