When the world is fast asleep,
Along the midnight skies--
As though it were a wandering cloud--
The ghostly dream-ship flies.

An angel stands at the dream-ship's helm,
An angel stands at the prow,
And an angel stands at the dream-ship's side
With a rue-wreath on her brow.

The other angels, silver-crowned,
Pilot and helmsman are,
And the angel with the wreath of rue
Tosseth the dreams afar.

The dreams they fall on rich and poor;
They fall on young and old;
And some are dreams of poverty,

Two dreams came down to earth one night
From the realm of mist and dew;
One was a dream of the old, old days,
And one was a dream of the new.

One was a dream of a shady lane
That led to the pickerel pond
Where the willows and rushes bowed themselves
To the brown old hills beyond.

And the people that peopled the old-time dream
Were pleasant and fair to see,
And the dreamer he walked with them again
As often of old walked he.

Oh, cool was the wind in the shady lane
That tangled his curly hair!

WHO seeks the shore where dreams outpour
Their floods in Slumber Seas
Lives all night long within a song
Of murmuring mysteries.

Where stars are lit above the pit
That holds the hollow dark,
Into their dawn he shall sail on
In an enchanted barque.

He shall not fear tho’ in his ear
The thrusting cranks of Time,
Thro’ blaze and gloom, with crash and boom,
Ring in tremendous rhyme,

Beyond the cloud that doth enshroud
Saturn with beauteous bands,

The lone man gazed and gazed upon his gold,
His sweat, his blood, the wage of weary days;
But now how sweet, how doubly sweet to hold
All gay and gleamy to the campfire blaze.
The evening sky was sinister and cold;
The willows shivered, wanly lay the snow;
The uncommiserating land, so old,
So worn, so grey, so niggard in its woe,
Peered through its ragged shroud. The lone man sighed,
Poured back the gaudy dust into its poke,
Gazed at the seething river listless-eyed,
Loaded his corn-cob pipe as if to smoke;

'Twas night, and the moonbeams palely fell
On the gloomy walls of a cheerless cell,
Where a captive sought a brief repose
From the bitter pangs of his waking woes.
O'er the dark blue waves the mighty deep
His spirit roamed in the dream of sleep,
To each well-loved spot of his native shore,
Where joyous he roved in the days of yore.
But o'er each scene a shadow threw
A gloom that never used to be,

All seemed so real, yet so untrue
To things once dear to memory.
The hill-side seemed a prison wall

'Twas in the prime of summer-time
An evening calm and cool,
And four-and-twenty happy boys
Came bounding out of school:
There were some that ran and some that leapt,
Like troutlets in a pool.

Away they sped with gamesome minds,
And souls untouched by sin;
To a level mead they came, and there
They drave the wickets in:
Pleasantly shone the setting sun
Over the town of Lynn.

Like sportive deer they coursed about,
And shouted as they ran,--
Turning to mirth all things of earth,
As only boyhood can;

A string of shiny days we had,
A spotless sky, a yellow sun;
And neither you nor I was sad
When that was through and done.

But when, one day, a boy comes by
And pleads me with your happiest vow,
"There was a lad I knew--" I'll sigh,
"I do not know him now."

And when another girl shall pass
And speak a little name I said,
Then you will say, "There was a lass-
I wonder is she dead."

And each of us will sigh, and start
A-talking of a faded year,
And lay a hand above a heart,

The freed dove flew to the Rajah's tower—
Fled from the slaughter of Moslem kings—
And the thorns have covered the city of Gaur.
Dove—dove—oh, homing dove!
Little white traitor, with woe on thy wings!

The Rajah of Dacca rode under the wall;
He set in his bosom a dove of flight—
`If she return, be sure that I fall."
Dove—dove—oh, homing dove!
Pressed to his heart in the thick of the fight.

"Fire the palace, the fort, and the keep—
Leave to the foeman no spoil at all.
In the flame of the palace lie down and sleep

When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights; --
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore; --
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore: --

Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,
There moves what seems a fiery spark,
A lonely spark with silvery rays
Piercing the coal-black night, --
A Meteor strange and bright: --
Hither and thither the vision strays,
A single lurid light.

Seven stars in the still water,
And seven in the sky;
Seven sins on the King's daughter,
Deep in her soul to lie.

Red roses are at her feet,
(Roses are red in her red-gold hair)
And O where her bosom and girdle meet
Red roses are hidden there.

Fair is the knight who lieth slain
Amid the rush and reed,
See the lean fishes that are fain
Upon dead men to feed.

Sweet is the page that lieth there,
(Cloth of gold is goodly prey,)
See the black ravens in the air,
Black, O black as the night are they.