Fragment III - Years After

Fade off the ridges, rosy light,

Fade slowly from the last gray height,

And leave no gloomy cloud to grieve

The heart of this enchanted eve!

All things beneath the still sky seem

Bound by the spell of a sweet dream;

In the dusk forest, dreamingly,

Droops slowly down each plumed head;

The river flowing softly by

Dreams of the sea; the quiet sea

Dreams of the unseen stars; and I

Am dreaming of the dreamless dead.

The river has a silken sheen,

But red rays of the sunset stain

Its pictures, from the steep shore caught,

Till shades of rock, and fern, and tree

Glow like the figures on a pane

Of some old church by twilight seen,

Or like the rich devices wrought

In mediaeval tapestry.

All lonely in a drifting boat

Through shine and shade I float and float,

Dreaming and dreaming, till I seem

Part of the picture and the dream.

There is no sound to break the spell,

No voice of bird or stir of bough;

Only the lisp of waters wreathing

In little ripples round the prow,

And a low air, like Silence breathing,

That hardly dusks the sleepy swell

Whereon I float to that strange deep

That sighs upon the shores of Sleep.