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Thou art like a city of the past, With its gorgeous halls into fragments cast, Amidst whose ruins there glide and play Familiar forms of the world's to-day.

Thou art like the depths where the seas have birth, Rich with the wealth that is lost from earth,— All the sere flowers of our days gone by, And the buried gems in thy bosom lie.

Yes! thou art like those dim sea-caves, A realm of treasures, a realm of graves! And the shapes through thy mysteries that come and go, Are of beauty and terror, of power and woe.

But for me, O thou picture-land of sleep! Thou art all one world of affections deep,— And wrung from my heart is each flushing dye, That sweeps o'er thy chambers of imagery.