Poem by Walter John De la Mare

The Glimpse

Art thou asleep? or have thy wings
Wearied of my unchanging skies?
Or, haply, is it fading dreams
    Are in my eyes?

Not even an echo in my heart
Tells me the courts thy feet trod last,
Bare as a leafless wood it is,
    The summer past.

My inmost mind is like a book
The reader dulls with lassitude,
Wherein the same old lovely words
    Sound poor and rude.

Yet through this vapid surface, I
Seem to see old-time deeps; I see,
Past the dark painting of the hour,
    Life's ecstasy.

Only a moment; as when day
Is set, and in the shade of night,
Through all the clouds that compassed her,
    Stoops into sight

Pale, changeless, everlasting Dian,
Gleams on the prone Endymion,
Troubles the dulness of his dreams:
    And then is gone.

1. The Horseman
2. Vain Finding
3. Napoleon
4. The Phantom
5. Foreboding

William Watson The Glimpse ("Just for a day you crossed my life's dull track")

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