TO IMAGINATION
When weary with the long day's
care,
And earthly change from
pain to pain,
And lost, and ready to despair,
Thy kind voice calls me
back again:
Oh, my true friend!
I am not lone,
While then canst speak with
such a tone!
So hopeless is the world
without;
The world within I doubly
prize;
Thy world, where guile,
and hate, and doubt,
And cold suspicion never
rise;
Where thou, and I, and Liberty,
Have undisputed sovereignty.
What matters it, that all
around
Danger, and guilt, and darkness
lie,
If but within our bosom's
bound
We hold a bright, untroubled
sky,
Warm with ten thousand mingled
rays
Of suns that know no winter
days?
Reason, indeed, may oft complain
For Nature's sad reality,
And tell the suffering heart
how vain
Its cherished dreams must
always be;
And Truth may rudely trample
down
The flowers of Fancy, newly-blown:
But thou art ever there,
to bring
The hovering vision back,
and breathe
New glories o'er the blighted
spring,
And call a lovelier Life
from Death.
And whisper, with a voice
divine,
Of real worlds, as bright
as thine.
I trust not to thy phantom
bliss,
Yet, still, in evening's
quiet hour,
With never-failing thankfulness,
I welcome thee, Benignant
Power;
Sure solacer of human cares,
And sweeter hope, when hope
despairs! |
