78
SUMMER ON THE LAKES.
And even so was thwarted. You must learn |
To dream another long and troublous dream, |
The dream of life. And you shall think you wake, |
And think the shadows substance, love and hate, |
Exchange and barter, joy, and weep, and dance, |
And this too shall be dream. |
Traveller. |
Oh who can say |
Where lies the boundary? What solid things |
That daily mock our senses, shall dissolve |
Before the might within, while shadowy forms |
Freeze into stark reality, defying |
The force and will of man. These forms I see, |
They may go with me through eternity, |
And bless or curse with ceaseless company, |
While yonder man, that I met yesternight, |
Where is he now? He passed before my eyes, |
He is gone, but these stay with me ever. |
That night the young man rested with the old, |
And, grave or gay, in laughter or in tears, |
They wore the night in converse. Morning came, |
The dreamer took his solitary way; |
And, as he pressed the old man's hand, he sighed, |
Must this too be a dream? |
Afterwards, of the rolling prairie. “There was one of twenty miles in extent, not flat, but high and rolling, so that when you arrived at a high part, by gentle ascents, the view was beyond measure grand; as far as the eye could reach, nothing but the green, rolling plain, and at a vast distance, groves, all looking gentle and cultivated, yet all uninhabited. I