O fair and wonderful! that shadow was
The golden dream of dreams that came across
His youth, full half an hundred years before,
And sent him wandering through the world.  Once more
In a lone boat that sails and oars had none,
Midmost a land of summer and the sun
Where nothing was that was not fair to see,
Adown a gliding river glided he,
And saw the city that was built thereby,
And saw the chariot of the queen draw nigh,
And gazed upon her in the goodly street;
Whereat he waked and rose upon his feet,
Remembering the Vision of the Seer,
And what the spirit spake unto his ear: 
“When in thy wanderings thou shalt dream once more
The fateful dream thou haddest heretofore,
That filled thy veins with longing as with wine
Till all thy being brimm’d over—­by that sign
Thou mayest know thyself at last to be
Within the borders of his empery
Who hath the mystic emerald stone, whose gleam
Shall light thee to the country of thy dream.”

Then rose the heart within his heart and said: 
“O bitter scornful Fate, in days long dead
I asked and thou denied’st mine asking:  now
The boon can no-wise profit me, and thou
Dost mock me with bestowal!” Thereupon
He fell to thinking of his youthhood gone,
And wept.  For now the goal, the longtime-sought,
Was even at hand, “but how shall I,” he thought,
“I that am old and sad and hoary-haired,
Enter the place for youth and love prepared? 
For in my veins the wellspring of desire
Hath failed, and in mine heart the golden fire
Burneth no more for ever.  I draw near
The night that is about our day, and hear
The sighing of the darkness as I go
Whose ancient secret there is none doth know.”

Ev’n so to his own heart he spake full sad,
And many and bitter were the thoughts he had
Of days that were and days that were to be. 
But now the East was big with dawn, and he
Drew nigh the city-gates and entered in,
Ere yet the place remurmured with the din
Of voices and the tread of human feet;
And going up the void and silent street,
All in the chill gleam of the new-lit air,
A Thought found way into his soul, and there
Abode and grew, and in brief while became
Desire, and quickened to a quenchless flame: 
And holding converse with himself, he said,
“Though in my heart the heart’s desire be dead,
And can no more these time-stilled pulses move;
Though Death were lovelier to these eyes than Love
Yet would these eyes behold, or ere I pass,
The land that mirror’d lay as in a glass
In the deep wells of dream.  And her that is
The sunlight of that city of all bliss,
Her would I fain see once with waking eyes
Whom sleep hath rendered unto vision twice. 
And having seen her beauty I would go
My way, even to the river which doth flow
From daylight unto darkness and the place
Of silence, where the ghosts are face to face.”