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(From The Troubadour)
CALL to mind your loveliest dream, | |
| When your sleep is lulled by a mountain stream, | |
| When your pillow is made of the violet, | |
| And over your head are the branches met | |
| Of a lime-tree covered with bloom and bees, | 5 |
| When the rose’s breath is on the breeze, | |
| When odors and light on your eyelids press | |
| With summer’s delicious idleness; | |
| And upon you some shadowy likeness may glance | |
| Of the faery banks of the bright Durance; | 10 |
| Just where at first its current flows | |
| Mid willows and its own white rose,— | |
| Its clear and early tide, or ere | |
| A shade, save trees, its waters bear. | |
| The sun, like an Indian king, has left | 15 |
| To that fair river a royal gift | |
| Of gold and purple; no longer shines | |
| His broad red disk o’er that forest of pines | |
| Sweeping beneath the burning sky | |
| Like a death-black ocean, whose billows lie | 20 |
| Dreaming dark dreams of storm in their sleep, | |
| When the wings of the tempest shall over them sweep | |
| And with its towers cleaving the red | |
| Of the sunset clouds, and its shadow spread | |
| Like a cloak before it, darkening the ranks | 25 |
| Of the light young trees on the river’s banks, | |
| And ending there, as the waters shone | |
| Too bright for shadows to rest upon, | |
| A castle stands; whose windows gleam | |
| Like the golden flash of a noon-lit stream | 30 |
| Seen through the lily and water-flag’s screen: | |
| Just so shine those panes through the ivy green, | |
| A curtain to shut out sun and air, | |
| Which the work of years has woven there. | |
| But not in the lighted pomp of the west | 35 |
| Looks the evening its loveliest: | |
| Enter yon turret, and round you gaze | |
| On what the twilight east displays: | |
| One star, pure, clear, as if it shed | |
| The dew on each young flower’s head; | 40 |
| And like a beauty of southern clime, | |
| Her veil thrown back for the first time, | |
| Pale, timid, as she feared to own | |
| Her claim upon the midnight throne, | |
| Shows the fair moon her crescent sign. | 45 |
| Beneath, in many a serpentine, | |
| The river wanders; chestnut-trees | |
| Spread their old boughs o’er cottages | |
| Where the low roofs and porticos | |
| Are covered with the Provence rose. | 50 |
| And there are vineyards; none might view | |
| The fruit o’er which the foliage weaves; | |
| And olive groves, pale, as the dew | |
| Crusted its silver o’er the leaves. | |
| And there the castle garden lay | 55 |
| With tints in beautiful array; | |
| Its dark green walks, its fountains falling, | |
| Its tame birds to each other calling; | |
| The peacock with its orient rings, | |
| The silver pheasant’s gleaming wings; | 60 |
| And on the breeze rich odors sent | |
| Sweet messages, as if they meant | |
| To rouse each sleeping sense to all | |
| The loveliness of evening’s fall. | |
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