Page:Zinzendorff and Other Poems.pdf/254

No pole-star for her compass. Guest divine!
Our earthly nature bows itself to thee,
Putting its ear of clay unto the sigh
Of thy disturbed visions, if perchance
It win some whisper of thy glorious birth,
And deathless heritage.
                                      Oh, dreams are dear
To those whom waking life hath surfeited
With dull monotony. 'Tis sweet when Day
Hath been a weariness, and Evening's hand
Like some lean miser, greedily doth clutch
The flowers that Morning brought us, to lie down,
And breathe a fragrance that they never knew,
Pressing our fingers to the thornless Rose,
That springs where'er we tread.
                                                   'Tis very sweet
To 'scape from stern Reality, who sits
Like some starch beldame, all precise and old,
And sheer intolerant, and on the wing
Of radiant Fancy, soar unblam'd and wild,
And limitless. When niggard Fortune makes
Our pillow stony, like the patriarch's bed
Who slept at Bethel, gentle dreams do plant
An airy ladder for the angels' feet,
Changing our hard couch for the gate of Heaven.
They feed us on ambrosia, till we loath
Our household bread.
                                   To traverse all untir'd
Broad realms, more bright than fabled Araby,
To hear unearthly music, to plunge deep
In seas of bliss, to make the tyrant-grave
Unlock its treasure-valve, and yield the forms