As one who seeks the silver moth of night
Where moonless gardens lose the afterglow,
My soul went forth ineffably, to know
Some vaguer vision unrevealed of light.

From halcyon fells whereon the falcons range,
From Hesper, and the sunsets mountain-born,
And From the trembling freshness of the morn
I turned me to a dreamland still and strange.

It seemed the hueless ashes of the day
And darkened glories filled that glooming world :
The spectrum of hesternal suns was furled
In immemorial valleys vast and grey.

Ruins, and wrecks of many a foundered year,
Doubtfully known, bestrewed the unvisioned verge,
Where, from unsounding reaches of blind surge,
Some nameless wraith of beauty fluttered near.

Was it the dove from shrines of lost delight?
The nightingale from love's necropolis ?
What dream-led messenger of time's abyss
Came from the dark, and vanished in the night ?