IX.
THE SUPREME HOUR.
There comes an hour when all life's joys and pains
To our raised vision seem
But as the flickering phantom that remains
Of some dead midnight dream!
There comes an hour when earth recedes so far.
Its wasted wavering ray
Wanes to the ghostly pallor of a star
Merged in the milky way.
Set on the sharp, sheer summit that divides
Immortal truth from mortal fantasie;
We hear the moaning of time's muffled tides
In measureless distance die!
Past passions—loves, ambitions and despairs,
Across the expiring swell
Send thro' void space, like wafts of Lethean airs,
Vague voices of farewell.
Ah, then! from life's long-haunted dream we part,
Roused as a child new-born,
We feel the pulses of the eternal heart
Throb thro' the eternal morn.
