Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/57

Rh Brooding o'er a sorrow hidden

In a heart-cell, which, unbidden,

Human eye may ne'er discover—

Human love may not console;

Sadly and in silence mourning

Fate which nothing can control.

Like a disembodied spirit,

The wan moon was hovering near it,

With a face all dim and pallid,

Just above the banner's height;

While it kept its murmuring motion,

Like a wave upon the ocean,

Or a sigh within a bosom

Struggling back from human sight;

Heedless of the spirit shedding

Round it her caressing light.

Long I gazed, almost forgetting

My own grieving and regretting,

On that dark, mysterious banner,

Floating on the midnight wind;

And I borrowed from its seeming

Thoughts in that strange hour of dreaming,

That have left undying tokens

Of themselves upon my mind;

And my spirit gathered from them

Knowledge holy and refined.

All the wildness of my madness

Altered to a calmer sadness—

Under that dim banner marshaled,

Memory viewed her countless host;

And my soul looked on confessing,

With a murmured prayer and blessing,

Each endearing reminiscence

In the tide of passion lost;

And a thrill of hope and gladness

My tumultuous bosom crossed.