 | The Poetical Works of John Payne |  |
176
DREAM-LIFE.
IT seems to me sometimes that I am deadAnd watch the live world in its ceaseless stream
Pass by me through the pauses of a dream.
The dawn breaks blue on them, the sunset's red
Burns on their smiles and on the tears they shed;
The moonlight floods them with its silver gleam:
To me they are as ghosts that do but seem;
Their grief is strange to me, their gladness dread.
Life lapses, like a vision dim and grey,
Before my sight, a cloud-wrack in the sky.
Since I am dead I can no longer die:
Ah, can it be this doom is laid on me,
To see the tired world slowly pass away
Nor die, but live on everlastingly?
| The Poetical Works of John Payne | |