Page:Poems Welby.djvu/65

Whose mossy sides went sloping to the sea
 Where slept another heaven serenely still,
While, from the mighty strong-hold of the seas,
The dead sent up their dirge upon the twilight breeze.

And there beneath a fringe of dewy leaves,
 That drooped away from many a bended bough,
I used to lie on summer's golden eves,
 And gaze above as I am gazing now,
Thinking each lustrous star a heavenly shrine
For an immortal soul, and wondered which was mine.

But now the moon, beside yon lonely hill,
 Lifts high her trembling cup of paly gold,
And all the planets, following slow and still,
 Along the deep their solemn marches hold,
While here and there some meteor's startling ray
Shoots streaks of arrowy fire far down the milky-way.

The milky-way! ah! fair, illumined path,
 That leadest upward to the gate of heaven,
My spirit soaring from this world of scath,
 Is lost with thee amid the clouds of even,
And there, upborne on Fancy's glittering wing,
Floats by the golden gate, and hears the angels sing.

O! who can lift above a careless look,
 While such bright scenes as these his thoughts engage,
And doubt, while reading from so fair a book,
 That God's own finger traced the glowing page,