Page:The poems of Emma Lazarus volume 1.djvu/162

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148
PHANTASIES.

Reveals itself the sleeping, quiet world,
Painted in tender grays and whites subdued—
The speckled stream with flakes of light impearled,

The wide, soft meadow and the massive wood.
Naught is too wild for our credulity
In this weird hour : our finest dreams hold good.

Quaint elves and frolic flower-sprites we see,
And fairies weaving rings of gossamer,
And angels floating through the filmy air.

V. IN THE NIGHT.

Let us go in : the air is dank and chill
With dewy midnight, and the moon rides high
O er ghostly fields, pale stream, and spectral hill.

This hour the dawn seems farthest from the sky
So weary long the space that h es between
That sacred joy and this dark mystery

Of earth and heaven : no glimmering is seen,
In the star-sprinkled east, of coming day,
Nor, westward, of the splendor that hath been.

Strange fears beset us, nameless terrors sway
The brooding soul, that hungers for her rest,
Outworn with changing moods, vain hopes delay,