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A DREAM OF DEATH.
- WHERE shall we sail to‐day?”—Thus said, methought,
- A voice that only could be heard in dreams:
- And on we glided without mast or oar,
- A wondrous boat upon a wondrous sea.
- Sudden, the shore curved inward to a bay,
- Broad, calm, with gorgeous sea‐weeds waving slow
- Beneath the water, like rich thoughts that stir
- In the mysterious deep of poets’ hearts.
- So still, so fair, so rosy in the dawn
- Lay that bright bay: yet something seemed to breath,
- Or in the air, or from the whispering waves,
- Or from that voice, as near as one’s own soul,
- “There was a wreck last night.” A wreck? then where
- The ship, the crew?—The all‐entombing sea
- On which is writ nor name nor chronicle
- Laid itself o’er them with smooth crystal smile.
- “Yet was the wreck last night.”. And gazing down
- Deep down below the surface, we were ware
- Of ghastly faces with their open eyes
- Uplooking to the dawn they could not see.
- One moved with moving sea‐weeds: one lay prone,
- The tinted fishes gliding o’er his breast;
- One, caught by floating hair, rocked quietly
- Upon his reedy cradle, like a child.
- “The wreck has been”—said the melodious voice,
- “Yet all is peace. The dead, that, while we slept,
- Struggled for life, now sleep and fear no storms:
- O’er them let us not weep when heaven smiles.”
- So we sailed on above the diamond sands,
- Bright sea‐flowers, and white faces stony calm,
- Till the waves bore us to the open main,
- And the great sun arose upon the world.
