Page:Poets of John Company.djvu/74

And still in holy dream I pace
Thy sands the livelong day.
And pray that our and thy disgrace.
May quickly pass away;
And oft I look, but still in vain,
To see thy hoary head,
In all an injured God's disdain,
Uprising from thy bed.

And when upon thy glassy stream
Descends the glow of even,
It seems—oh does it only seem—
Thy wave to mix with heaven:
I thither bend my ardent gaze,
Till every hue be past,
Assured that in that radiant blaze,
Thou wilt descend at last.

And in the solemn hour of night,
When Nature's pulse has died.
With many a dark and nameless rite,
I haunt thy gloomy tide;
And oft I lift my voice on high,
To chaunt the magic line,
And start at echo's far reply,
Half dreading it is thine.

And now chill age begins to creep
In languor thro' my blood,
And soon I seek thee—low and deep,
Beneath thy gushing flood:
But oh! not yet—for still I yearn,
And still I look to see.
The splendours of the past return.
And all bow down to thee.