Page:Landon in The New Monthly 1833.pdf/3



it is not made to last, The dream which haunts my soul; The shadow even now is cast Which soon will wrap the whole.

Ah! waking dreams that mock the day Have other end than those, Which come beneath the moonlight ray, And charm the eyes they close.

The vision colouring the night ‘Mid bloom and brightness wakes, Banished by morning's cheerful light, Which gladdens while it breaks.

But dreams which fix the waking eye With deeper spells than sleep, When hours unnoted pass us by, From such we wake and weep.

We wake,—but not to sleep again; The heart has lost its youth,— The morning light which wakes us then, Calm, cold, and stern, is Truth.

I know all this, and yet I yield My spirit to the snare, And gather flowers upon the field, Though Woe and Fate are there.

The maid divine, who bound her wreath On Etna's fatal plain, Knew not the foe that lurked beneath The summer-clad domain.