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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Dreams
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Enslavement Of Beauty |