Poem by Maria Jane Jewsbury

A Summer Eve’s Vision

   Thought from the bosom's inmost cell,
   By magic tints made visible.

                             Montgomery.

I HEARD last night a lovely lute,
I heard it in the sunset hour,
When every jarring sound was mute,
And golden light bathed field and flower.
I saw the hills in bright repose,
And far away a silent sea,
Whilst nearer hamlet-homes arose,
Each sheltered by its guardian tree.
O'er all was spread a soft blue sky,
And where the distant waters rolled,
Type of the blest abodes on high
Swept the sun's path of pearl and gold.
I turned me from a gentle throng,
Night stilled the lute and quenched the beam.
But sunset and the voice of song
Pursued me and I slept to dream.
I dreamt that I again was young,
With merry heart and frolic will,
That hopes around my spirit clung,
As morning mists enwreathe the hill.
I saw ambition's heights arise,
Fame's pathway o'er it spread sublime,
And sprang all bird-like to the skies,
Nor feared the coming night of time.
Unwearied up the steep I prest,
And vainly deemed my home would be
'Mid the bright bowers where crowned ones rest,
Amid the glorious and the free.
But soon came on a darker mood,
Fame's lingering sunbeam ceased to glow,
The heights grew barren where I stood,
And Death's wide Ocean roared below.
Then waking from that troubled dream,
This lesson did my heart imbue,
In every earthly hope and scheme,
How far the seeming from the true!

1. Address to Sleep
2. The Oceanides. No. 4. The Sunken Rock
3. The Oceanides. No. 5. Address to the Deep
4. The Oceanides. No. 2. My Sea-Hermitage
5. The Syren World

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