Page:Zinzendorff and Other Poems.pdf/254

254 No pole-star for her compass. Guest divine! Our earthly nature bows itself to thee, Putting its ear of clay unto the sigh Of thy disturbed visions, if perchance It win some whisper of thy glorious birth, And deathless heritage. Oh, dreams are dear To those whom waking life hath surfeited With dull monotony. 'Tis sweet when Day Hath been a weariness, and Evening's hand Like some lean miser, greedily doth clutch The flowers that Morning brought us, to lie down, And breathe a fragrance that they never knew, Pressing our fingers to the thornless Rose, That springs where'er we tread. 'Tis very sweet To 'scape from stern Reality, who sits Like some starch beldame, all precise and old, And sheer intolerant, and on the wing Of radiant Fancy, soar unblam'd and wild, And limitless. When niggard Fortune makes Our pillow stony, like the patriarch's bed Who slept at Bethel, gentle dreams do plant An airy ladder for the angels' feet, Changing our hard couch for the gate of Heaven. They feed us on ambrosia, till we loath Our household bread. To traverse all untir'd Broad realms, more bright than fabled Araby, To hear unearthly music, to plunge deep In seas of bliss, to make the tyrant-grave Unlock its treasure-valve, and yield the forms