A Dream
Behold an endless evening over land
That lapped in vast vales rises up afar
Into the frozen mountains; evening brimmed
With silence, so miraculously clear
That crevices in peaks of distant stone
And rust—red boughs of cedars, at the foot
Of those remote and voiceless waterfalls,
Which down the black steeps of lone gorges plunge,
Are shaped distinct unto the wondering eye;
And the mind, seeing, notes not how ’tis fair,
But throned in languor has already summ’d
All the vain journey thither. Not a sound
Near by; no motion lifts a single leaf,
Nor stirs one cold stalk of the sappy spurge
And powdery hemlock, nor 'mid clustered reeds
The peeping heads of certain dim blue flowers
Mirrored in water idle as themselves.
And she that sits upon the bank, whose head
Droops toward her shoulder, whose full lips are closed,
And whose wide eyes seem vacant, yet contain
Profound remembrance sunken like a wreck
Beneath gray seas, is she of this entranced
And glimmering land the sole inhabitant?
