FAIRY-LAND.

DIM vales--and shadowy floods—
And cloudy-looking woods,

Whose forms we can't discover

For the tears that drip all over—

Huge moons there wax and wane

Again—again—again—

Every moment of the night—

For ever changing places—

And they put out the star-light

With the breath from their pale faces.

About twelve by the moon-dial

One more filmy than the rest

(A kind, which, upon trial,

They have found to be the best)

Comes down--still down-and down

With its centre on the crown

Wherever they may be―

O'er the strange woods-o'er the sea

Over spirits on the wing

Over every drowsy thing

And buries them up quite

In a labyrinth of light-
And then, how deep !-O, deep!

Is the passion of their sleep.

In the morning they arise,

And their moony covering

Is soaring in the skies,

With the tempests as they toss, Like almost anything

Or a yellow Albatross.

They use that moon no more

For the same end as before

Videlicet a tent

Which I think extravagant:

Its atomies, however,

Into a shower dissever,

Of which those butterflies

Of Earth, who seek the skies,

And so come down again,
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.

The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness

Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,

And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody-

Then-ah, then, I would awake

To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright.

But a tremulous delight—

A feeling not the jewelled mine

Could teach or bribe me to define

Nor Love-although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,

And in its gulf a fitting grave

For him who thence could solace bring

To his lone imagining—

Whose solitary soul could make

An Eden of that dim lake.