AH, often do I wait and watch,
And look up, straining through the Real
With longing eyes, my friend, to catch
Faint glimpses of your white Ideal.

I know she loved to rest her feet
By slumbrous seas and hidden strand;
But mostly hints of her I meet
On moony spots of mountain land.

I’ve never reached her shining place,
And only cross at times a gleam;
As one might pass a fleeting face
Just on the outside of a Dream.

But you may climb, her happy Choice!
She knows your step, the maiden true,
And ever when she hears your voice,
She turns and sits and waits for you.

How sweet to rest on breezy crest
With such a Love, what time the Morn
Looks from his halls of rosy rest,
Across green miles of gleaming corn!

How sweet to find a leafy nook,
When bees are out, and Day burns mute,
Where you may hear a passion’d brook
Play past you, like a mellow flute!

Or, turning from the sunken sun,
On fields of dim delight to lie—
To close your eyes and muse upon
The twilight’s strange divinity!

Or through the Night’s mysterious noon,
While Sound lies hushed among the trees,
To sit and watch a mirror’d moon
Float over silver-sleeping seas!

Oh, vain regret! why should I stay
To think and dream of joys unknown?
You walk with her from day to day,
I faint afar off—and alone.