The more on my fair voyage I dream, the more my langours lose their hold, the more I ponder that calm scene whose spell this feeble heart consoled, the more I fondly think thereon, filled with the fancies of my brain, the more, at ease, I see again manor and moon and forest sun! You, silver moon, on heaven's fine thread, most faithfully my musings led, till the sun rose for your reprieve. The past I long to disbelieve. How fair the shadow when the breath of the gale in all its ominous might, was by the rainbow put to flight. I do not wish to credit death. Hills pure, and made for me complete, spires, stream with tender gesturings, I rouse you with the faith that springs in hearts celestial fire doth heat. Is this a swallow's twittering clear, this sound that traverses my room? . . . What? The toad chants athwart the gloom. What? 'Tis the rook's harsh cry I hear . . . Apple and pear trees, flowery close that, shrined in verse, I fain would hold, you snow even as you snowed of old, at dawning, in the zephyr rose. And you, my golden poplars, bent in winged files beneath the stress of murmuring breezes, you caress the stainless azure firmament. Am I yonder? is it here? this fair, sweet country I so much adore? 'Tis yonder? I am also there. The problem troubles me no more. La Ferte-Milon, thy fair day, its vistas I in dreams would tread? That would be saying love is dead, while yet its end is far away. Manors, do you not feel me near, still in your ruins' charmed desmesne? Already doth my Shade appear behind the Phantom of Racine: soundless they roam the rampart's height, 'neath the same veil's uplifted sheen, o'er the esplanade where comes the night, where glides the night of stars serene. And one, the greatest of the twain, to the other one that earthward bends, says, "'Neath the stars, lo, France descends toward the tiered bastions of the plain." "How perfect the nobility of this Valois land in hushed expanse! Let us adore, my son." You see two Phantoms kneel, adoring France, O manor! Yes, 'tis he, I wis, 'tis surely he, that Phantom high; how he shines! his darker comrade, 'tis . . . I have already said, 'tis I. -- La Ferte-Milon, thy fair days, would I recall their vanished gleams? -- Forever aid me, memories, my life to people with my Dreams! Grant that my happiness tomorrow, as yesterday, as today, may roll out of remembered dreams I borrow from this, my self-sufficing soul! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TYRANNICK [TYRANNIC] LOVE: PROLOGUE by JOHN DRYDEN POLWART ON THE GREEN by ALLAN RAMSAY ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: 109 by PHILIP SIDNEY TO GEORGE CRUIKSHANK, ESQ., ON SEEING HIS PICTURE ... by MATTHEW ARNOLD WINTER WIZARDRY by LAURA S. BECK THE WANDERER: 2. IN FRANCE: PROGRESS by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON |