That for this plant strangers his memory task'd
Through the thick deaths of half a century;
And thus he answered-" Well, I do not know
"Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so;
"He died before my day of Sextonship,
"And I had not the digging of this grave."
And is this all? I thought,—and do we rip
The veil of Immortality? and crave

I know not what of honour and of light
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?
So soon and so successless? As I said,
The Architect of all on which we tread,

For Earth is but a tombstone, did essay

To extricate remembrance from the clay,

Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's thought Were it not that all life must end in one,

Of which we are but dreamers;-as he caught

As 'twere the twilight of a former Sun,

Thus spoke he," I believe the man of whom "You wot, who lies in this selected tomb,

"Was a most famous writer in his day,

"And therefore travellers step from out their way "To pay him honour,-and myself whate'er "Your honour pleases,"-then most pleased I shook From out my pocket's avaricious nook

Some certain coins of silver, which as 'twere

Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare
So much but inconveniently ;-Ye smile,

I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while,
Because my homely phrase the truth would tell.
You are the fools, not I—for I did dwell
With a deep thought, and with a soften'd eye,
On that Old Sexton's natural homily,

In which there was Obscurity and Fame,
The Glory and the Nothing of a Name.

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THE DREAM.

I.

OUR life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed

Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality,

And dreams in their developement have breath, And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy; They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, They take a weight from off our waking toils,

They do divide our being; they become

A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;

They pass like spirits of the past,-they speak
Like sybils of the future; they have power-
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;

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They make us what we were not-what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanish'd shadows-Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow? What are they?
Creations of the mind?-The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dream'd
Perchance in sleep-for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.

II.

I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity, the last

As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave

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Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men
Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke

Arising from such rustic roofs;-the hill

Was crown'd with a peculiar diadem

Of trees, in circular array, so fix'd,

Not by the sport of nature, but of man:

These two, a maiden and a' youth, were there
Gazing-the one on all that was beneath
Fair as herself-but the boy gazed on her;
And both were young, and one was beautiful:
And both were young--yet not alike in youth.

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