| Oh! |
| that my young life were a lasting dream!
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| My spirit not awakening, till the beam
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| Of an Eternity should bring the morrow
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| Yes! |
| tho' that long dream were of hopeless sorrow
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| 'Twere better than the cold reality
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| Of waking life, to him whose heart must be
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| And hath been still, upon the lovely earth
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| A chaos of deep passion, from his birth
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| But should it be — that dream eternally
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| Continuing — as dreams have been to me
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| In my young boyhood — should it thus be given
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| 'Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven
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| For I have revell’d, when the sun was bright
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| I' the summer sky, in dreams of living light
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| And loveliness, — have left my very heart
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| In climes of my imagining, apart
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| From mine own home, with beings that have been
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| Of mine own thought — what more could I have seen?
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| 'Twas once — and only once — and the wild hour
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| From my remembrance shall not pass — some power
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| Or spell had bound me — 'twas the chilly wind
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| Came o’er me in the night, and left behind
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| Its image on my spirit — or the moon
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| Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon
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| Too coldly — or the stars — howe’er it was
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| That dream was as that night-wind — let it pass
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| I have been happy, tho' in a dream
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| I have been happy — and I love the theme:
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| Dreams! |
| in their vivid coloring of life
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| As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
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| Of semblance with reality, which brings
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| To the delirious eye, more lovely things
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| Of Paradise and Love — and all our own!
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| Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known
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| Something Unique |