Take this kiss upon the brow!  And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow—­ You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream:  Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand—­ How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep While I weep—­while I weep!  O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp?  O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave?  Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

1849.

* * * * *

TO MARIE LOUISE (SHEW).

  Of all who hail thy presence as the morning—­
  Of all to whom thine absence is the night—­
  The blotting utterly from out high heaven
  The sacred sun—­of all who, weeping, bless thee
  Hourly for hope—­for life—­ah, above all,
  For the resurrection of deep buried faith
  In truth, in virtue, in humanity—­
  Of all who, on despair’s unhallowed bed
  Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen
  At thy soft-murmured words, “Let there be light!”
  At thy soft-murmured words that were fulfilled
  In thy seraphic glancing of thine eyes—­
  Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude
  Nearest resembles worship,—­oh, remember
  The truest, the most fervently devoted,
  And think that these weak lines are written by him—­
  By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think
  His spirit is communing with an angel’s.

1847.

* * * * *

TO MARIE LOUISE (SHEW).

  Not long ago, the writer of these lines,
  In the mad pride of intellectuality,
  Maintained “the power of words”—­denied that ever
  A thought arose within the human brain
  Beyond the utterance of the human tongue: 
  And now, as if in mockery of that boast,
  Two words—­two foreign soft dissyllables—­
  Italian tones, made only to be murmured
  By angels dreaming in the moonlit “dew
  That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,”—­
  Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart,
  Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,
  Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions
  Than even the seraph harper, Israfel,
  (Who has “the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures,”)
  Could hope to utter.  And I! my spells are broken. 
  The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand. 
  With thy dear name as text, though hidden by thee,
  I cannot write—­I cannot speak or think—­
  Alas, I cannot feel; for ’tis not feeling,
  This standing motionless upon the golden
  Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams,
  Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,
  And thrilling as I see, upon the right,
  Upon the left, and all the way along,
  Amid empurpled vapors, far away
  To where the prospect terminates—­thee only!