The Dream

Rest, rest; the troubled breast
Panteth evermore for rest: --
Be it sleep or be it death,

Rest is all it coveteth.
Tell me, dost thou remember the old time
We sat together by that sunny stream,

And dreamed our happiness was too sublime
Only to be a dream?
Gazing, till steadfast gazing made us blind,

We watched the fishes leaping at their play;
Thinking our love too tender and too kind
Ever to pass away.

And some of all our thoughts were true at least
What time we thought together by that stream;
Thy happiness has evermore increased, --

My love was not a dream.
And, now that thou art gone, I often sit
On its green margin, for thou once wert there;

And see the clouds that, floating over it,
Darken the quiet air.
Yes oftentimes I sit beside it now,

Harkening the wavelets ripple o'er the sands;
Until again I hear thy whispered vow
And feel thy pressing hands.

Then the bright sun seems to stand still in heaven,
The stream sings gladly as it onward flows,
The rushes grow more green, the grass more even.

Blossoms the budding rose.
I say: " It is a joy-dream; I will take it;
He is not gone -- he will return to me."

What found'st thou in my heart that thou shouldst break it? --
How have I injured thee?
Oh I am weary of life's passing show,

Its pageant and its pain.
I would I could lie down lone in my woe,
Ne'er to rise up again;

I would I could lie down where none might know;
For truly love is vain.
Truly love's vain; but oh how vainer still

Is that which is not love, but seems!
Concealed indifference, a covered ill,
A very dream of dreams.