Poems Lyrical and Dramatic :: :: University of Virginia Library

With broken emerald gleams the swoln wave smokes and steams:
The wet shore shines: night shakes with flaming stars:
Sea-green behind blue peaks day fades in circling streaks
Which meteors traverse in their shining cars.

The galley slips and slides along these glassy tides,
The air smells faint of lilies and drenched grass:
The sad Dream smiles and steers by noiseless streams and meres,
I lying in the prow hear no sound pass.

We are going, She and I, beyond earth's sea and sky,
Beyond remembrance and the reach of tears:
The old loves' faces press around me less and less,
Mere spectres fading as the sleep-land nears.

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New stars unite their choir in heavens of stranger fire,
New forms of god and goddess rise to view:
They bathe white breast and limb in waters weird and dim,
Thin fluid flames with green light filtering through.

Then one with poppies wreathed hath stooped o'er me and breathed,
Breathed on me from the flowery verge and said,
This wave is Lethe-wave: this quiet is the grave:
The pilot-dream hath brought thee to the dead.

Then gladly on the bank I stepped and stooped and drank,
Drank in sea-deep the keen cool quiet stream:
All thirst to sing or weep fell from me in that sleep,
And now I sit 'mid other dreams a dream.