James Russell Lowell

A Reverie

  In the twilight deep and silent
  Comes thy spirit unto mine,
  When the moonlight and the starlight
  Over cliff and woodland shine,
  And the quiver of the river
  Seems a thrill of joy benign.

  Then I rise and wander slowly
  To the headland by the sea,
  When the evening star throbs setting
  Through the cloudy cedar tree,
  And from under, mellow thunder
  Of the surf comes fitfully.

  Then within my soul I feel thee
  Like a gleam of other years,
  Visions of my childhood murmur
  Their old madness in my ears,
  Till the pleasance of thy presence
  Cools my heart with blissful tears.

  All the wondrous dreams of boyhood--
  All youth's fiery thirst of praise--
  All the surer hopes of manhood
  Blossoming in sadder days--
  Joys that bound me, griefs that crowned me
  With a better wreath than bays--

  All the longings after freedom--
  The vague love of human kind,
  Wandering far and near at random
  Like a winged seed in the wind--
  The dim yearnings and fierce burnings
  Of an undirected mind--

  All of these, oh best belovèd,
  Happiest present dreams and past,
  In thy love find safe fulfilment,
  Ripened into truths at last;
  Faith and beauty, hope and duty
  To one centre gather fast.

  How my nature, like an ocean,
  At the breath of thine awakes,
  Leaps its shores in mad exulting
  And in foamy thunder breaks,
  Then downsinking, lieth shrinking
  At the tumult that it makes!

  Blazing Hesperus hath sunken
  Low within the pale-blue west,
  And with golden splendor crowneth
  The horizon's piny crest;
  Thoughtful quiet stills the riot
  Of wild longing in my breast.

  Home I loiter through the moonlight,
  Underneath the quivering trees,
  Which, as if a spirit stirred them,
  Sway and bend, till by degrees
  The far surge's murmur merges
  In the rustle of the breeze.