You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees,
In vacant chairs, your absent images,
And points where once you sat, and now should be
But are not.—­I demand if ever we 135
Shall meet as then we met;—­and she replies. 
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;
’I know the past alone—­but summon home
My sister Hope,—­she speaks of all to come.’ 
But I, an old diviner, who knew well 140
Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
In citing every passage o’er and o’er
Of our communion—­how on the sea-shore 145
We watched the ocean and the sky together,
Under the roof of blue Italian weather;
How I ran home through last year’s thunder-storm,
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
Upon my cheek—­and how we often made 150
Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed
The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
As well it might, were it less firm and clear
Than ours must ever be;—­and how we spun
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun 155
Of this familiar life, which seems to be
But is not:—­or is but quaint mockery
Of all we would believe, and sadly blame
The jarring and inexplicable frame
Of this wrong world:—­and then anatomize 160
The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
Were closed in distant years;—­or widely guess
The issue of the earth’s great business,
When we shall be as we no longer are—­
Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war 165
Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not;—­or how
You listened to some interrupted flow
Of visionary rhyme,—­in joy and pain
Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps;—­or how we sought 170
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining their sacred waters with our tears;
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed! 
Or how I, wisest lady! then endued 175
The language of a land which now is free,
And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,
Flits round the tyrant’s sceptre like a cloud,
And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,
’My name is Legion!’—­that majestic tongue 180
Which Calderon over the desert flung
Of ages and of nations; and which found
An echo in our hearts, and with the sound
Startled oblivion;—­thou wert then to me
As is a nurse—­when inarticulately 185
A child would talk as its grown parents do. 
If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
If hawks chase doves through the aethereal way,