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Now, from the goal of this, my heart’s fair fate,

I scan the backward way with wondering eyes,

And, in the silence of the night, debate

Upon each changing charm that lay in wait

Beneath the arch of ever stranger skies.

Like to a map the varied prospect lies

Of the long years since from your side I turned:

Fata Morgana-wise my pleasures rise,

Each in its turn sought after, squandered, spurned—

More trivial each, that treasured was of late!

How wide a world it was that met my sight,

Whose eyes were narrowed to but childish things!

Asia lay bathed in unimagined light,

With all the splendors of her past bedight.

Work of the ages’ full-forgotten kings:

And, rocking ’twixt her summers and her springs,

The blue-robed Indian Ocean slept and sighed,

Decked with her emerald islands, looped in strings

Upon the breathing bosom of her tide:—

Slept all bronze day, and all star-studded night.