To watch the night out is a dreary thing:
To muse and sorrow o'er my desperate lot,
Flitting in thought around the distant spot
Blessed by thy beauty; circling ring on ring,
Closer and closer, in vain flights that bring
My dreams but nearer to their end, and blot
The vision out with truths not well forgot,--
This is the very point of fancy's sting.
But I must watch while other mortals sleep,
That is the fortune of my restless art;
And how much worse were it to sit apart,
In cold seclusion, while my labors creep,
Than thus for thee to wake and muse and weep
With a full fancy and a fuller heart?