University of Virginia Library

There is a land of woods and streams
I know alway in my dreams,
Full of sunshine and sweet air,
And wafted fragrance everywhere—
A land of birds, a land of bees,
A land of oaks and almond-trees,
Where nibbling lambs and children stray
All the livelong summer's day
Through flowery meadows of delight.
A land far seen in coolest light,
With its slumbrous woods and streams
Widening round the Mere of Dreams;
Of deep rest and happy shades,
Daisied lawns and solemn glades,
And twilight haunts for lovers' meet,
Where the mystic meadow-sweet,
While Hesper cold sheds influence holy,
Breathes luxurious melancholy.
A land of infinite repose,
Girdled about with wizard snows
And fastnesses of ancient ice,
Where the enchanted mountains rise,
And far, sunlit glaciers shine
Through visionary glooms of pine.
There spirits of thunder make their home,
And cloud-wraiths brooding go and come,
And blithe winds renew their wings
To bring health to all fair things—
And mighty voices oft are heard
Uttering some mysterious word
Of potent tempting. Then, too fond!
Passion of the land beyond
With strange awe confounds my wits,
Shaking my soul with ague-fits—
Agonies—energies divine,
That chill like ice and warm like wine.
All the gladness of that land
Such wild spell cannot withstand;
I must leave its lawns behind
To wrestle with the eager wind,
Grip the rocks in stern embrace,
And meet the lightning face to face.

O bitter doom! O trance of pain!
My gentle love, wandering in vain,
Forsaken, by the Mere of Dreams,
Through the land of woods and streams
Seeks me with solitary feet.
Then no more we twain may meet
In angel-guarded solitudes
Where no thing accurst intrudes,
But the seraphim aspire
Bearing their censers of sweet fire,
And the seraphim descend
In showers of blessing—each a friend,
Closer and secreter to keep
Holiest secrets than the deep
Nuptial darkness of the night
That hid her love from Psyche's sight.
O bitter doom! O trance of pain!
O love of lovers, loved in vain!
Beneath a blissful almond tree
My sad love sits and wails for me.

Under the pleasant fields of sleep
There deepens down a sunless deep,
Under the placid Mere of Dreams,
Which floats with all its woods and streams
Above the abysses, where I know
Every cavern of deep woe,
Each unfathomed pit of fear
That those dismal bounds insphere.

Many and many a time my soul
Has felt the clutch of him who stole
Sad Demeter's Zeus-born child,
Ravished to hell even while she smiled
Girlishly among her flowers;
Many a time his hideous powers
On a sudden have made quake
The glad waters of that lake—
Slain my birds and slain my bees,
Blasted my tender almond-trees
In youngest blooming, and low-laid
My oak's centuries of shade.
Many and many a time have I—
When my heart beat tranquilly,
In some green secluded dell
With my sweet love nested well;
Or leapt in a more lone delight,
Straining up some Alpine height—
Heard those demon steeds, hell-black,
Ramp up, snorting, at my back,
Felt the unhallowed might of Dis
Ravish me at a touch from bliss,
As darkness gulft me!

What strange doom
Waits me in that fiery gloom?
How may I reveal the terror
Of the cavern's mazy error
Where I sink with gloomy Dis?

In my ears I hear the hiss
Of the snake-fiends, as they fold
My heart in Gorgon coilings cold.
Shudderingly I name each name,
Known too well: Despair and Shame,
Whispering madness at each ear,
Horror, and Jealousy, and Fear,
Remorse, and Envy, and Desire,
With clammy eyes of chilling fire,
Of the hell-brood nine there be,
And the last is Apathy.

Oft when in their ghastly chain,
Tired with struggling, I have lain,
Long-captive in the tangling toils,
Wound about with loathsome coils,
A dread voice, of melody
Keen as pain, hath cried to me:
‘Look on me, thou son of man!’
And lo! through the twilight wan
Of drear hell, mine eyes have seen
The still face of hell's pale Queen:
She, even she—Persephone—
With her glance hath set me free!
Tremblingly before her throne
I have stood, and I have known
All the sadness of those eyes,
Sad with love's last mysteries.
In her caverns of deep woe
Where no tears of passion flow,
I have seen the germs of things,
Bathed me in the secret springs
That feed the tranquil Mere of Dreams;
I have watched the mystic streams
Of motherhood, like blood that run,
Warm with kisses of the sun.
All my oaks and almond-trees
Bathe their hidden roots in these;
Through every tender blade of grass
And every tiniest flow'ret pass
Their influent drops, like wine of blood,
Moulding featly every bud
And every leaf on every tree;
The fairy dews, refreshfully
Shed by night on every lawn,
From their cisterns deep are drawn.
This, the cavern of despair,
The dark grave of all things fair,
Joy's decay and beauty's tomb,
Is but Nature's teeming womb,
Where she fashions new things fair
In their season meet; for there
The wind of change blows without end,
Into the abyss the hours descend—
Virgin shadows, casting down
Every one her fragrant crown:
The wind of change blows without end,
Out of the abyss the hours ascend,
Each one freighted matronly
With fruitage—to the minstrelsy
Of planetary spirits of love
In the crystal heaven above.

Lo! the secrets of my dream
Of that land of vale and stream,
And of that unfathomed den,
Dreadful to the sons of men.
How many happy days and nights
I dwell among those dear delights,
Ten times as many must I dwell
With pale Persephone in hell,
While beneath her almond-tree
My sad love sits and wails for me,
Sick, till Orpheus-like I bring
From the under world the Spring.